Meta and Manus face harsh pushback from Beijing after $2 billion deal

On March 25, 2026, the Manus story took a predictable turn: Chinese authorities began a tough review of the deal that placed one of the most high-profile AI startups of Chinese origin under Meta's control. Two Manus co-founders were summoned to Beijing and temporarily barred from leaving the country while officials check whether the deal broke foreign investment rules.

Why the review began

The situation makes sense in context. The US and China have competed for AI leadership for years, while Beijing pours money into the industry, tightens control over the tech sector and watches uneasily as strong engineers and promising companies drift under American influence. Against that backdrop, the sale of Manus to Meta for $2 billion looks to Chinese regulators not like an ordinary investor exit but like a possible leak of technology, talent and a future strategic asset.

Formally, there is no criminal case or public accusation so far. Regulators are checking whether the deal violated rules on foreign investment and cross-border technology transfers. But the method of pressure is telling: when founders are called in for a conversation at China's National Development and Reform Commission and then not allowed to leave the country, that is clearly not routine bureaucracy. Questions were also raised in the US: Senator John Cornyn had earlier criticized American capital's involvement in funding a Chinese AI startup.

How Manus grew

The uproar over the deal also reflects how fast Manus went from viral demo to a company Meta was willing to pay billions for. In spring 2025, the project was seen as a bold experiment in AI agents. Within a few months, however, the startup had captured the attention of users, investors and competitors, and became one of the most discussed assets in AI worldwide.

• In spring 2025, the startup showed a demo of an AI agent that screened job candidates, planned trips and analyzed stock portfolios.
• Almost immediately, Manus claimed it outperformed OpenAI Deep Research in a number of scenarios, and quickly became the center of discussion.
• A few weeks later, Benchmark led a $75 million round at a valuation of about $500 million.
• By December 2025, the service had millions of users and more than $100 million in annual recurring revenue.
• Meta then agreed to buy Manus for roughly $2 billion to strengthen its own bet on AI agents.

That pace of growth alone makes the company a sensitive asset for any regulator and for the competitive race. For Meta, buying Manus was a fast way to bolster its agent products, where big platforms are trying to stake out the market before it fully takes shape. For China, it is the story of one of the most prominent local AI projects passing into the hands of an American giant just as its commercial potential began to unfold.

Escaping China's orbit

What may have irritated Beijing most was not the sale itself but how Manus approached it. The company did not simply find an American buyer. Through much of 2025 it steadily built distance from Chinese jurisdiction: it moved its headquarters and core team from Beijing to Singapore, restructured its ownership and, after the deal was announced, promised to cut ties with Chinese investors and shut down operations in China. In effect, Manus tried to prove it was already a Singaporean company.

China has a separate expression for such cases: "selling young shoots." It describes companies that are grown domestically, then move abroad and are sold to foreign buyers before they fully mature. Not only the founders leave with them, but also intellectual property, expertise and future profits. Given earlier campaigns against Chinese tech giants, the signal is clear: if a business grew on China's technology base, the state wants a say in its fate.

What this means

The Manus case shows that the AI market increasingly does not follow standard startup-exit rules. If a company has Chinese roots, notable agent technology and interest from an American giant, the deal instantly becomes a geopolitical story. For founders and investors, the message is direct: relocating to Singapore, a new holding structure and even a formal exit from China no longer guarantee that Beijing will let such an asset go without tough questions.

*Meta is designated an extremist organization and banned in Russia.