Billionaire Chen Tianqiao splits MiroMind between China and the US after the Manus affair

Chinese billionaire Chen Tianqiao is restructuring the AI startup MiroMind after the Manus affair showed that the old playbook of "move the company to Singapore and operate globally" no longer protects against state intervention. MiroMind is now sharply separating the Chinese and American arms of its business to reduce regulatory risk.

Why the restructuring began

The trigger was the fate of Manus. On April 27, 2026, Beijing ordered the cancellation of Meta's $2 billion acquisition of the AI startup, even though the purchase had been announced back in December 2025 and the team and investors had already settled into the new structure. For the Chinese authorities, Manus became an example of how technology, capital and key specialists can quickly leave the country through a nominally foreign shell. After that, regulators turned their attention to other companies with a similar trajectory.

According to Chen, MiroMind received inquiries from the authorities and decided afterward to move to a stricter governance model. He calls the arrangement unpleasant but necessary: for a business with Chinese roots, simply opening an office in Singapore or California is no longer enough. It must show up front where the code is written, who owns the data and which assets physically remain in each jurisdiction.

"Regulation, geopolitics and public attention are changing faster than

many companies can adapt."

How the business will be split

MiroMind's new model is built around strict barriers between the Chinese and American sides. The company is introducing protocols that prohibit cross-border exchange of information and code, and that limit the movement of employees, data and assets between different parts of the group. In essence, it is an attempt to prove to both Beijing and American partners that each side lives in its own compliance perimeter.

• AGI research and fundamental development are concentrated in MiroMind's Singapore structure.
• Separate regional companies within the Shanda ecosystem handle local AI applications and deployment tailored to the requirements of specific markets.
• Code, data and internal knowledge should no longer flow freely between Chinese and American teams.
• The movement of specialists between offices is kept to a minimum to avoid questions about the transfer of critical expertise.

The company began this shift back in January, when it announced a redistribution of functions and the relocation of part of its research activity to Singapore. It was previously reported that some employees in Shanghai were asked to relocate, and MiroMind itself stressed its international structure, based in Singapore with a presence in the US. Now this logic is becoming not a marketing pitch but an operating rule: separate people, separate processes, separate technology stacks.

Why everyone is watching Manus

Manus became a painful case because until recently it was seen as a model of global expansion for a Chinese AI startup. The project launched in March 2025, raised $75 million from US-based Benchmark a month later, moved part of its team from China to Singapore in the summer, and by December Meta had announced the acquisition. On paper it looked like the ideal route: Chinese roots, Singapore registration, American capital and access to the global market.

But it was precisely this setup that irritated Beijing. The authorities saw in the deal not just M&A but a possible leak of sensitive technology and talent to the main geopolitical rival. Against this backdrop, according to industry reports, China has already warned a number of major players, from Moonshot AI and StepFun to ByteDance, that they can no longer take American capital without explicit approval. For the whole sector this means one simple thing: what matters is not only the country of registration and the name on the website, but also the origin of the team, capital, intellectual property and computing infrastructure.

What this means

For AI startups of Chinese origin, the era is no longer one of "globalization at any cost" but of forced separation. Deals through Singapore, offshore holdings and hybrid teams no longer look like a universal workaround. If the trend holds, companies will have to design two worlds from the outset: separate legal entities, separate investors, separate teams and separate code-access perimeters.

*Meta is recognized as an extremist organization and banned in Russia.