Meta thought it had bought Manus. Beijing disagreed. The AI agent startup, whose software automates desktop tasks, has resumed running as an independent lab after China’s foreign-investment reviewers forced Meta to unwind the roughly $2bn deal it announced on the 29th of December last year. It is a rare case of a government reaching into a done deal and pulling it apart.
The sequence of events
Meta struck the acquisition in December 2025. In April, China’s National Development and Reform Commission told both sides to withdraw the transaction. This week the founding team, including Xiao Hong, Zhang Tao and Ji Yichao, took the company back as an “independent agent lab”. Many former investors are reportedly circling to retake stakes at a $2bn valuation, with Tencent potentially becoming the largest shareholder.
Why Beijing cared
A capable, China-founded AI agent lab passing into the hands of a US giant is exactly the sort of technology transfer that regulators on both sides of the Pacific now treat as a national-security matter. The same instinct that has Washington vetting Chinese deals runs in reverse here. AI agents are increasingly seen as strategic infrastructure, and neither superpower wants the other holding the keys.
The catch for users
There is a real cost buried in the unwind: to comply with the rules, data generated by certain users on or after the December acquisition date is being deleted. If you built anything on Manus in that window, check what survives. When geopolitics reaches into a product, your files can become collateral, and “your data” turns out to have an asterisk attached.
The take
Manus surviving as an independent lab is the good ending for the technology and probably for its users. But the story underneath is bigger than one startup: the era where a big US platform could hoover up any promising foreign lab with a chequebook is closing, and AI is now firmly a thing that governments fight over. Expect more deals to die on a regulator’s desk, not a boardroom’s.
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Did you know: the same founders who sold Manus for $2bn now get to own it again, possibly at the same price, with Tencent’s help. A rare do-over in a business that almost never offers them.