Manus Lost Meta's $2B Deal, Then Raised $500M in Five Months
Manus Lost Meta's $2B Deal, Then Raised $500M in Five Months In April, Beijing killed the biggest AI acquisition of the year. Five months later, the startup it was supposed to "protect" raised more than $500 million at a reported $4 billion valuation — roughly double what Meta had agreed to pay. That is the actual outcome of the Manus saga so far, and it is the funniest possible punchline to one of the strangest deals in AI history: the forced unwind made the company worth more, not less. On Thursday, Butterfly Effect — the parent company of the Chinese AI agent startup Manus — said it had completed a funding round of more than $500 million, co-led by Boyu Capital and IDG Capital, with existing investors Tencent, HSG (formerly Sequoia China) and ZhenFund also participating. It is the company's first raise since China forced Meta to abandon its roughly $2 billion takeover, and it is, by some margin, the largest single funding round China's AI application secto...