Less than six months after Chinese regulatory authorities blocked U.S. tech giant Meta’s multi-billion dollar acquisition of Singapore-based AI startup Manus, the company announced Tuesday it will restart operations as a standalone independent entity.\n\nFounded by Chinese developers and registered in Singapore, Manus was slated to be acquired by Meta in a deal reportedly valued at approximately $2 billion. The acquisition, announced last December, aligned with Meta’s strategic goal of integrating a cutting-edge AI agent tool into its product ecosystem, bringing advanced autonomous AI capabilities to billions of global users and opening new commercial opportunities across the firm’s social media platforms. AI agents, which are designed to complete complex tasks without continuous human intervention, have emerged as a high-priority area of innovation for major tech firms competing in the global AI race.\n\nBut in April, China’s top economic planning body stepped in to block the transaction and ordered the two companies to unwind the acquisition. Local reports also indicate Chinese authorities restricted international travel for two of Manus’s co-founders, barring them from leaving the country. Meta has repeatedly maintained that the deal fully complied with all applicable global regulations.\n\nThe blocked acquisition is part of a broader Chinese government crackdown on a practice widely labeled “Singapore-washing”, a strategy where Chinese-founded companies rebase their headquarters in Singapore to access looser regulatory frameworks, broader global customer bases, and more abundant international funding. While Beijing tolerated this practice for years, experts say the Manus case marks a clear turning point amid escalating US-China competition in advanced artificial intelligence.\n\n“This crackdown is first and foremost a signal to China’s own technology leaders that attempts to bypass national regulatory oversight will not be tolerated,” explained Wendy Chang, a China technology analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, in an April interview with AFP.\n\nAs part of the separation process from Meta, Manus confirmed it will delete some user data dating back to late December, and has urged all users affected by the operational shift to back up their personal information as soon as possible. “This is part of our separation from Meta; we must take this step to comply with regulatory requirements in specific parts of the world,” the startup explained in an official blog post announcing the transition.\n\nAccording to reporting from the Financial Times, Manus’s original investors are currently in advanced discussions to retake ownership stakes in the company at a $2 billion valuation, matching the price tag of the scrapped Meta deal. Chinese tech giant Tencent is set to become the startup’s largest single shareholder if the agreement is finalized.\n\nFor Meta, the unwinding of the Manus acquisition represents a temporary setback to the company’s aggressive push to expand its footprint in the global AI market, a race that has intensified over the past two years. The development comes as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg laid out his long-term vision for the future of artificial intelligence in a public manifesto published Monday, calling on the U.S. to step up competition with China to shape the global trajectory of AI development.\n\nZuckerberg argued in the essay that the U.S. should prevent what he called “government tyranny” over AI development, and advance policies that ensure cutting-edge “superintelligence” — a theoretical threshold where AI capabilities outpace all human cognitive ability — is accessible broadly to the public rather than concentrated in the hands of a small number of state or corporate actors.\n\nAlongside releasing his vision for AI, Meta announced a new open-weight AI model called Glimmer on Monday, built partially on the foundation of the closed-source Muse Spark model the company unveiled in April. Unlike closed AI models offered by competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic — which function as “black boxes” that external users cannot inspect or modify — open-weight models allow users to download and alter the core algorithmic parameters that govern AI behavior. Zuckerberg framed open access as a core pillar of a healthy global AI ecosystem, writing: “Rather than centralizing superintelligence, we should distribute it widely and give every person the ability to direct it.”\n\nThe announcement comes amid evolving AI policy in the U.S. under the Trump administration. Multiple reports confirm that leading AI developers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Nvidia, Microsoft, and Meta have held closed-door discussions with White House officials in recent months. In June, President Trump signed an executive order requiring major AI developers to submit new high-risk models for federal security review 30 days before public release, and gave federal regulators a 60-day deadline to finalize the full framework for the review process. Open-weight AI models, like the one Meta launched this week, are widely expected to be exempt from the new voluntary review requirements. The 60-day deadline for the framework passed on August 1 with no public announcement from the administration.
AI firm Manus to resume ‘independent’ operations after China blocks Meta deal
