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What the sale and troubles of Manus reveal about the US-China AI race
Manus did everything it could to shed its China links. Its sale to Meta and China’s probe into the company show that matters little in today’s AI geopolitics.
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Beijing is now scrutinising Meta’s acquisition of Manus and that other start-ups might try to follow in the footsteps of Manus’ parent company, Butterfly Effect.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
When Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Butterfly Effect scored a US$2.5 billion (S$3.2 billion) deal in December with Meta for its autonomous AI agent, Manus, its founders probably thought they had done everything right.
Just a year after founding the company in Beijing in 2022, developer and entrepreneur “Red” Xiao Hong, 33, registered it in Singapore with paid-up capital of $100,000.
