Meta moves to distance Manus from China links following acquisition

John Fortt (Anchor) 00:00.000

is closing out 2025 with the 11th hour acquisition. The company announcing it's buying Manis, a Singapore startup that builds AI agents. McKenzie Segalos has some details. McKenzie.

Mackenzie Sigalos (Technology Reporter) 00:11.520

Hey John, so Meta reportedly paying around $2 billion dollars for Manis, a startup founded in China, now headquartered in Singapore, that builds general purpose AI agents. Meta's business services line already pulls in $10 billion dollars a year. Bolt on agent capabilities and

Mackenzie Sigalos (Technology Reporter) 00:26.040

maybe Meta finally gets some ROI on its AI spent. And for price tag that's paid for itself many times over just in today's trade. Now this deal tells you everything about how CEO Mark Zuckerberg is steering the ship. He controls 60% of the company, can make these bets without

Mackenzie Sigalos (Technology Reporter) 00:41.680

much push back, and he's proven he's not afraid to buy his way to growth. Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, even the Scale AI deal earlier this year. It was an Aqua hire, not acquisition, but he got the firepower and brains behind that company. And with Meta's own model still lagging

Mackenzie Sigalos (Technology Reporter) 00:57.320

in real usage, Manus reads as a short cut to traction. Something that Meta couldn't build fast enough on its own. AI Chief Alexander Wang also planning to weave Manus into Meta's broader product stack and with roughly 3 billion daily users, Meta has a distribution to push it

Mackenzie Sigalos (Technology Reporter) 01:13.800

from a business tool into into a consumer habit. John?

John Fortt (Anchor) 01:17.400

This is an interesting one because I believe around mid-year soon after it actually debuted uh this company moved from China to Singapore. It's got workers in Tokyo, etc. I mean a lot of the workers on every AI project, everywhere in the world, are Chinese. But it seems like

John Fortt (Anchor) 01:34.920

this company Manus specifically positioned itself for this kind of partnership and possibility. Perhaps with the knowledge that if they had stayed operating based in China, this might not have been so possible.

Mackenzie Sigalos (Technology Reporter) 01:47.160

It's such an excellent point. Benchmark, when they made an investment in the company, caught flak for that. And so then you saw the headquarters shift, as you noted, laying off staff in the mainland, deprioritizing, uh offering its product to to China Chinese users. And on top

Mackenzie Sigalos (Technology Reporter) 02:02.600

of that, running on Anthropex models to really try to distance itself from any sort of perception despite the fact that its founders are from China and its cap table includes names like Tencent and Chinese VCs.