In a surprising turn of events, the tech landscape of 2025 closed out with a blockbuster acquisition—Meta snapping up AI agent startup Manus (along with its parent company, Butterfly Effect) for a staggering sum in the billions of dollars.

Manus, an AI agent firm established by a Chinese team that subsequently shifted its headquarters to Singapore, experienced a meteoric rise. From capturing global attention at the start of the year to being acquired by Meta by year-end, it witnessed the AI market's rapid evolution within just a few months.

This acquisition marks Meta's most audacious move since its acquisition of WhatsApp, setting a new precedent for Chinese startups in global tech expansion and being seen as a pivotal moment in the global AI race, shifting focus from large models to intelligent agents.

1. For Chinese Entrepreneurs: A Source of Encouragement and a New Global Tech Expansion Benchmark

Following in the footsteps of DeepSeek, Manus's journey is another testament to a Chinese tech team's prowess on the global AI stage.

For a considerable time, Silicon Valley's perception of Chinese AI has been confined to application-layer innovation. Yet, the architectural design prowess displayed by the Manus team (predominantly composed of individuals born in the 1990s and 2000s) in the general agent domain underscores that Chinese engineers possess the capability to define world-class products.

This acquisition serves as a significant morale booster for Chinese entrepreneurs. Huang Dongxu, co-founder and CTO of PingCAP, a friend and collaborator of Manus, remarked, "This is undoubtedly the most impactful news lately. It's a tremendous boost for Chinese entrepreneurship, especially for those venturing overseas, and the best New Year's gift for 2026."

This deal epitomizes the fusion of "Chinese tech DNA + global capital operations." For Chinese entrepreneurs, the message is multifaceted—it celebrates the triumph of Chinese technical talent while also hinting at a sense of regret for China's domestic AI sector.

Manus's success was built on the foundation of "Chinese intellect + global market." This outlines a pragmatic yet somewhat disheartening path for future entrepreneurs: to secure high valuations from dollar-denominated capital or acquisitions by tech giants, "de-Sinicization" or "global architecture" has almost become a prerequisite.

In July of this year, Manus opted to relocate its core operations and headquarters to Singapore and exited the Chinese market, primarily to mitigate geopolitical risks and navigate the complex dual regulations of computing power embargoes and data compliance. However, this pragmatic approach also means that China's domestic market cannot directly reap the benefits of this cutting-edge technology.

This acquisition also acknowledges the elite team behind Manus: a lean crew of just a few dozen individuals who crafted a product valued at billions of dollars. This narrative echoes that of DeepSeek, reinforcing the notion that in the AI era, high-density technical talent and extreme engineering capabilities outweigh mere manpower and resource accumulation.

From Manus's viral debut at the start of the year to its acquisition by a tech giant at year-end, it mirrors the rapid strides in AI development. As Huang Dongxu put it, "In just a few months, Manus traversed the journey from 0 to 1, from 1 to 100, and ultimately achieved success. As a collaborator, we were even propelled forward by Manus, truly experiencing the velocity of an AI Native Company."

2. For AI Development: A New Inflection Point

Manus is hailed as a leader in the general intelligent agent space, with its products capable of autonomously planning and executing complex tasks (such as coding and generating research reports), outperforming OpenAI's rivals in certain benchmark tests.

Meta boasts powerful open-source models in the Llama series but lags in the application layer, particularly in agents capable of managing complex workflows.

Acquiring the market's top independent player directly is Meta's go-to strategy to maintain its tech behemoth status. Manus showcases AI's ability to autonomously invoke tools and solve multi-step complex problems, a crucial piece for Meta to complete its AI puzzle.

Over the past two years, the AI boom has been primarily fueled by chatbots, captivating us with AI's prowess in language understanding and generation, capable of crafting poems and paintings. However, in enterprise settings, what's needed is not "poetry" but "action." As an "all-encompassing action system" integrating perception, decision-making, and execution capabilities, intelligent agents can deliver tangible productivity gains.

At the dawn of this year, Manus went viral, with some predicting that 2025 would mark the inaugural year of intelligent agents. Meta's high-value acquisition of Manus and its bet on intelligent agents signal the dawn of the AI intelligent agent era—the next phase of AI competition will hinge not on whose model "chats better" but on whose AI "can accomplish more."

3. For Business Leaders: Time to Focus on Bolstering Digital and Intelligent Foundations

Meta's acquisition of Manus underscores the bright application prospects of intelligent agents. Theoretically, the future competitiveness of enterprises will hinge on how many tireless and brilliant "Manuses" they can employ. However, in reality, the implementation of intelligent agents in enterprises is fraught with challenges, and businesses must maintain composure when deploying them.

The dichotomy between the bright prospects and implementation hurdles of intelligent agents is vividly reflected on Salesforce's Agentforce platform.

Over the past year, Salesforce has aggressively promoted the use of generative AI, particularly deploying large models in its core product, Agentforce, to automate business processes like customer service. Consequently, Salesforce once announced the layoff of approximately 4,000 customer support positions, assigning some of the work to AI agents.

However, as the agent system was deployed on a massive scale in real business scenarios, some glaring reliability and consistency issues began to surface. Salesforce is currently pivoting from its initial strategy of emphasizing the "comprehensive application" of LLM models to a more cautious and business scenario-oriented approach.

The core challenge in implementing intelligent agents lies in factors such as the shortcomings of enterprise digital and intelligent technology foundations, data and engineering bottlenecks, and safety and compliance constraints. These collectively make it "easy to create demos but difficult to implement" for intelligent agents.

Therefore, when deploying intelligent agents, enterprises must first lay a solid foundation in digital and intelligent technologies, ensuring technological and business alignment, and avoid the pitfall of "implementing AI for the sake of AI."