Meta Acquires Autonomous Agent Developer Manus AI, Marks Its Fifth Deal in 2025

Meta completed the acquisition of Singapore-based startup, Manus AI, on Monday. The artificial intelligence (AI) company is known for its autonomous general-purpose AI agent, which can complete a range of tasks based on user prompts. The AI agent was released in March, and later the company introduced a subscription-based service to make it widely available. Even after the acquisition, the service and the core product will continue to be available to users, but they will be managed by the Menlo Park-based tech giant. Notably, this is the fifth AI acquisition of Meta in 2025.

Meta's Latest AI Purchase Is Manus AI

In separate announcement posts, both Meta and Manus AI confirmed the acquisition. Announcing the purchase, the Facebook parent said, “We are excited to announce that Manus is joining Meta to bring a leading agent to billions of people and unlock opportunities for businesses across our products.” On the other hand, Manus called it a “validation of our pioneering work” with general-purpose AI agents.

While the financial details of the acquisition were not made public by either party, The Wall Street Journal reported that Mark Zuckerberg's company spent upwards of $2 billion (roughly Rs. 17,990 crore) for the deal. Based on public data, the last time the tech giant spent such a massive amount was in 2014, when it purchased Oculus VR. Oculus' technology later became the foundation for Meta's Quest-branded virtual reality headsets.

Manus AI is a Singapore-based startup; however, its parent company, Butterfly Effect, is based in China. However, with the transfer of ownership, Meta told Nikkei Asia that the Chinese ties no longer exist. Manus will reportedly discontinue its services and operations in the country as well.

The AI startup gained mainstream popularity in March, after it released a general-purpose AI agent that could perform a wide range of tasks, such as sifting through resumes and CVs, writing code for a software, booking hotels and movie tickets online, and more. At the time of launch, the company claimed that its agent outperformed OpenAI's Deep Research.

As per the startup, the AI agent has so far processed more than 147 trillion tokens and has “powered the creation of over 80 million virtual computers.” Meta is not planning to continue the functioning of the startup as an independent entity either. “We will continue to operate and sell the Manus service, as well as integrate it into our products,” the company said in the post.