Manus, the AI agent startup whose parent company is Butterfly Effect, has raised more than USD 500 million. It is the company’s first funding round since Meta was forced to abandon its acquisition. Boyu Capital, a private equity firm, and venture investor IDG Capital led the round.
Existing shareholders Tencent, HSG and ZhenFund put in follow-on money. The company did not disclose its post-funding valuation. Bloomberg reported last month that Manus would double its valuation to USD 4 billion, which would make it the most valuable AI agent maker in China.
What happened with Meta
Meta announced the acquisition of Manus in December, in a deal valued at roughly USD 2 billion. The company had started integrating Manus’ team and technology into its own systems. Chinese regulators then blocked it. The National Development and Reform Commission said it had decided to prohibit foreign investment in the Manus project.
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The episode turned a company that was seen as a blueprint for Chinese startups chasing global scale into a test case instead. Manus launched in China in early 2025 and moved its staff to Singapore after winning backing from US venture firm Benchmark. It then found itself caught between regulators in Beijing and Washington.
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Earlier this month, Manus said it had resumed independent operations after the split. Its founding team, the company said, will keep building generative AI agents for users globally.
What it has shipped since the split
Manus has since released Manus 2.0, built on a new in-house execution system called Cascade. It also launched Cue, a standalone personal agent app in which each agent gets its own email address, phone number and mobile wallet.
Those launches matter for the funding case. Investors are backing an agent product that has to compete as foundation models keep improving quickly. That pace reduces the space for thin wrappers around someone else’s model.
What investors and analysts are saying
Dan Wang, China director at Eurasia Group, said the raise shows the short-term fallout of the Meta case has been contained and that investors are willing to back Manus as an independent company. He also pointed to renewed confidence in the commercial potential of AI agents.
The more immediate question is operational. Han Lin, China country director at The Asia Group, said Manus now has to prove scale, profitability and regulatory alignment.
Analysts expect the company to consider a public listing eventually. The nearer task is restructuring its business and ownership to meet Beijing’s requirements, while showing it can make money. The USD 500 million gives Manus the runway to try.