Manus Raises Over $500 Million Five Months After Beijing Ordered Meta Out

Butterfly Effect, the parent of the AI agent maker Manus, said Thursday it raised more than $500 million, its first round since Beijing forced Meta to abandon a roughly $2 billion purchase. The company announced the round in a WeChat post, TechCrunch reported, and it is announced rather than confirmed by a filing.

Boyu Capital and IDG Capital led. Existing shareholders Tencent, HSG (formerly Sequoia China) and ZhenFund took part. Manus gave no valuation and did not answer TechCrunch's questions about one.

The $4 billion number is not Manus's

Bloomberg reported last month that Manus was seeking about $500 million at a $4 billion valuation, according to Decrypt, which calls that roughly double Meta's price. The company has not confirmed it, and the announcement does not say whether the money is a single close or committed in stages.

The only revenue figure on record is older than the unwind. Manus reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue by December 2025, about eight months after its March 2025 launch, per Decrypt. If the round is priced at $4 billion post-money, that is 40 times a revenue number from before the deal collapsed, and neither the company nor its investors have said what it earns now.

1. Meta purchase, announced Dec. 2025 (approx.)2 $ billion
2. Reported target for this round4 $ billion

Source: Decrypt, Oct. 2026 (Meta price is approximate; $4 billion is a Bloomberg-reported target, not confirmed by Manus)

How the Meta deal came apart

Date	Event
December 2025	Meta announces a purchase of about $2 billion
Dec. 29, 2025	Cutoff date for user data Manus later deletes in the split
April 27, 2026	China's National Development and Reform Commission orders the deal withdrawn
June 2026	Meta cuts ties
August 2026	Manus resumes independent operations

The commission said it would "prohibit foreign investment in Manus in accordance with laws and regulations," Decrypt reported. Manus had moved its staff to Singapore around mid-2025, which did not keep it out of Beijing's reach. Decrypt, citing Reuters, said co-founders Xiao Hong and Ji Yichao were summoned to Beijing and barred from leaving China.

What the new money backs

Manus sells Cue, an app that gives personal AI agents their own email addresses, phone numbers, digital wallets and computers, with a payment limit the user sets, TechCrunch said. It also offers chatbot and app-building tools, in competition with Cursor, Lovable and Replit. The company said it will keep hiring in China and abroad, and it did not say how it will spend the round.

That is the same gap seen in other recent rounds on this desk. TypeSafe AI announced $870 million at $7.5 billion, below the $10 billion reported in talks, and Supabase raised $150 million with no valuation attached. In each case the number that travels is the one the company did not state.

TechCrunch said Manus is reportedly weighing a Hong Kong initial public offering. A listing prospectus would be the first document to show audited revenue and the price of this round, and it would settle whether $4 billion was ever the figure.