Manus founders seek $1 billion to reverse Meta acquisition after Chinese regulatory block

China's Manus founders seek $1 billion to undo Meta takeover, Bloomberg News reports

May 21 (Reuters) - Manus co-founders are weighing ways to comply with China's order to unwind Meta's (META.O), opens new tab $2 billion-plus acquisition of the AI startup, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday. Founders Xiao Hong, Ji Yichao and Zhang Tao are exploring options, including raising about $1 billion from external investors to buy their way back, the report said citing people familiar with the matter. They are discussing a funding round ⁠that would value the company at a level to match what Meta paid to buy Singapore-based Manus, the report added. Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Manus did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment. The founders may put in their own capital to bridge any gap, the report said. Such a move could turn Manus into a joint venture with the ⁠potential backers and lead to an initial public offering in Hong Kong. Meta had announced the acquisition late December to expand advanced AI integration across its platforms. China soon launched a review into whether ⁠the deal violated investment rules and barred two Manus co-founders from leaving the country. Last month, Beijing ordered California-based Meta to unwind the buyout ⁠amid tighter scrutiny of U.S. investments in advanced domestic tech firms as U.S.-China tech tensions grow. Manus develops general-purpose AI ⁠agents that can function as digital employees, independently carrying out tasks such as research and automation with minimal human input. Reporting by Ruchika Khanna in Bengaluru; Editing by Joyjeet Das Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Manus eyes $1bn raise to buy itself out of Meta acquisition after Chinese block

Beijing has ordered the Singapore-via-China agentic AI startup to reverse Meta's $2bn-plus December acquisition. Manus's response, on Bloomberg's reporting, is to raise the capital required to buy itself back out. Manus AI, the Singapore-headquartered agentic-AI start-up at the centre of the Chinese regulatory block on Meta's $2bn-plus December acquisition, is weighing a fresh capital raise of up to $1bn to fund the unwind of the very deal that closed five months ago, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. The raise, if it lands, would value Manus materially above the $2bn Meta paid in December and turn the unwind into a recapitalisation. The deal Manus is trying to reverse is unusual in shape. China's National Development and Reform Commission ordered Meta to unwind the acquisition in late April, citing possible violations of Chinese investment rules and concerns about the outflow of strategically important AI technology. Meta has been preparing for the unwind under a regulator-set deadline of weeks rather than months. Manus's corporate history is the part that makes the regulatory framing operative. The company was founded in China and relocated its headquarters and core team to Singapore last year after a US-led venture round, with most of its Chinese workforce cut and the operating entity changed to Singapore-based Butterfly Effect. By the time Meta acquired the company in December, Manus was, on its legal-structure documents, a Singaporean entity. Beijing's NDRC has taken the position that the Chinese-origin status of the underlying technology and the team's prior Chinese employment-history both still bring the company within the scope of Chinese investment-review rules. The new $1bn raise the Bloomberg report describes would, on the Bloomberg framing, be used to buy Meta's interest back, fund the data-removal-and-separation work the unwind requires, and capitalise the standalone Manus business through the next operating year. The company's reported $100m-plus ARR run-rate, achieved inside eight months of launching its first general-purpose AI agent, is the operating spine. Manus's December valuation in the Meta deal implied a roughly 4x markup over the $500m valuation set in the April 2025 round led by Benchmark. The geopolitical context is the part this story sits inside. The original block has the NDRC's decision as the most visible single example to date of Beijing's willingness to extend cross-border-investment enforcement to Singapore-headquartered companies with Chinese-origin technology. O'Melveny's legal analysis has flagged the precedent as material for any US-led AI deal involving a target company with Chinese roots, regardless of where the target is currently incorporated. The implication for cross-border-investment lawyers is that the Singaporean re-domicile is no longer a clean way to neutralise Chinese investment-review risk. For Manus itself, the raise positions the company to land on the standalone-Singapore side of the trade with a balance sheet large enough to compete inside the agentic-AI category. The Singaporean operating context is the part that is increasingly active: OpenAI's $235m Singapore applied-AI lab announcement landed the same week, and the city-state has been positioning itself as the Asia-Pacific AI hub of choice for Western-aligned and AI-sovereignty-conscious companies. Manus has not, on the available reporting, named the investors it is in conversation with for the $1bn round or signalled a target close date for the recapitalisation. The news on the prospective Manus raise is the first visible public signal on how that financial side might be closed. The next visible proof point will be either a formal Manus funding announcement or a Meta-side disclosure of the unwind's economic terms, whichever lands first inside the NDRC's deadline window.