Manus raises major funding following regulatory block of its sale to Meta

Manus, a maker of artificial intelligence software, has received more than $500 million from new investors.

Boyu Capital led the investment group with support from Tencent and others in this round.

The company did not confirm the final price despite outside reports claiming the valuation reached $4 billion.

The team began work on the project in 2022 with a simple browser tool for web access.

Staff moved their base of operations to Singapore during mid-2025 before seeking major partnerships.

Chinese regulators eventually stopped the deal from going forward due to concerns about local talent leaving.

The startup was required to end the partnership and remove certain user data records as part of the split.

Recent updates include a new software system called Manus 2.0 released just before this funding news.

It uses a custom layer known as a harness to adjust how underlying models perform different tasks.

This change makes the agent faster and cuts down on data processing costs by roughly a quarter.

Another addition named Cue gives AI agents their own digital resources like email accounts or wallets.

Meta responded by starting its own internal project called Muse which recently gained popularity in app stores.