Manus Parent Announces $500 Million-Plus Round, With No Valuation and a $4 Billion Report Unconfirmed

Butterfly Effect, the parent company of the AI agent Manus, said on Thursday that it raised more than $500 million, its first round since China forced Meta to abandon a $2 billion acquisition of the startup. The company announced the figure in a WeChat post, TechCrunch reports. It did not disclose a valuation, and the word "more than" is the only precision the amount carries.

Boyu Capital and IDG Capital led, according to TechCrunch and TechNode, which cites the Chinese outlet Yicai. Existing shareholders Tencent, HSG (formerly Sequoia China) and ZhenFund took part. Both outlets rest on the company's own announcement, so this is announced rather than documented in a filing.

The $4 billion figure nobody has confirmed

A valuation was reported in September. Startups.com.br, relaying The Wall Street Journal, said Manus was seeking $500 million at a $4 billion valuation. Boyu, IDG and the battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology were named as possible investors. CATL does not appear in either of Thursday's participant lists.

If $4 billion held and were post-money, $500 million would buy about 12.5 percent of the company. If it were pre-money, the stake would be about 11 percent. Manus declined to answer TechCrunch's questions about valuation, so both calculations are arithmetic on a reported number, not a disclosed term.

Against revenue the figure looks different. Manus was reportedly above $100 million in annual recurring revenue when Meta agreed to buy it, which puts $4 billion at roughly 40 times that figure. The Information reported in June, per Startups.com.br, a run rate of $400 million to $500 million, which would cut the multiple to between 8 and 10 times. Manus has confirmed neither revenue number.

How the Meta deal came apart

Date	Event
Dec. 29, 2025	Meta announces purchase for more than $2 billion
Apr. 27, 2026	China's National Development and Reform Commission annuls the deal and bars foreign investment
Aug. 2026	Manus resumes independent operations, tells users to export data
Oct. 8, 2026	Butterfly Effect announces the round

The April order, reported by Reuters according to Startups.com.br, cited possible export-control and foreign-investment violations. Meta said the deal fully complied with applicable law. Data generated after the Meta deal was deleted in certain jurisdictions to meet regulatory requirements. In June, The Information reported that early investors planned to buy the company back for about the same $2 billion, with Tencent, HSG and ZhenFund participating and Benchmark staying out.

That makes this round unusual in one respect. The buyers who unwound Meta's purchase are largely the same names that sit on the cap table now, joined by two new leads. Benchmark, which led Manus's $75 million round in May 2025, is not among the participants TechCrunch names.

What the money is for

Manus said it will keep hiring in China and abroad. Its products compete with Cursor, Lovable and Replit, per TechCrunch, covering a chatbot, app and website building, design, presentations and video. It launched Manus 2.0 on a new architecture and a separate app, Cue, which gives personal agents their own email addresses, phone numbers, digital wallets and computers, with payments capped at limits the user sets.

Agent products that hold money are a different risk class from chat, and TechCrunch's account does not say what the caps default to. The same question is being asked of memory tools for coding agents, such as claude-mem, whose installer asks for a login, and of other funded agent startups like Vesta in mortgage lending.

What would confirm the numbers

Manus is reportedly weighing a Hong Kong IPO, and any prospectus would have to state valuation, revenue and the terms of Thursday's round. Until a filing or a company statement says otherwise, the defensible description is that Butterfly Effect has announced a raise above $500 million at an undisclosed price.