by kylecazar
6 subcomments
- From their Wikipedia, because I had no idea who they were:
"Following Manus's launch in March 2025, Butterfly Effect raised $75 million in a funding round led by Benchmark at a valuation of approximately $500 million in April 2025."
Half a billion a month after launch and acquisition before the end of the same year. Wild times.
by chenzhekl
5 subcomments
- This acquisition is a complete joke in China. From the very beginning, the company focused almost entirely on marketing. Then, after a few months, it fled China and relocated to Singapore. Now that it’s been acquired by Meta, you could say it has finally fulfilled its mission.
by varunramesh
2 subcomments
- It's everywhere. https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1l8harj/its_not_ju...
- I’m wondering why these companies are so hyped and valued at these astronomical levels. Honestly, nothing really impresses me enough to think, “Wow, this company actually deserves that kind of valuation”.
These valuations are to the point point that this looks too close to money laundering, just like buying art.
by mercurialsolo
1 subcomments
- I had tried manus and never could find a use-case for them that worked for me
1. Insanely overpriced versus over deep research products
2. Deep research has increasingly become a feature in most other products
3. They shot themselves in the foot by sharing very limited usage credits, in the initial wave of DR products pretty much everything was free - ChatGPT, Claude, Pplx, Deepseek. they rolled this back later and added a free credit tier but by then the hype had moved off.
TBF
1. Their post synthesis, formatting abilities were better than others
2. Their initial launch was "hypey" - lots of waitlist based access.
But I had seen somewhere they mention they had hit $100mn in revenue - M&A also signals that DR is increasingly a feature of the labs. And labs missing an assistant will probably buy a well distributed one
- My guess is they had to sell to keep the lights on (similar to Windsurf).
They’re reportedly at ~$100M ARR, implying about $8.3–8.5M in monthly revenue (ARR = last month * 12).
At the same time, they claim to have processed 147T+ tokens. For context, pricing that volume on something like Sonnet 4.5 would come out to roughly $500M in API costs. They likely offset a chunk of that with open models, but for higher-quality outputs, they’re still paying meaningful amounts to Claude / OpenAI / Google.
Hard to make those numbers work without a lot of capital or an exit.
by CamelCaseName
1 subcomments
- I remember this company from the very beginning. I was very confused by them, but just the other day they sent an email saying they had hit $100MM ARR and $125MM run rate.
Who is paying? No clue, must be big in China.
I skipped going to their hackathon :')
- Manus has been the best agent for turning text into work --useable slides, code, extracting data from websites, etc. that I've seen. There are better tools for specific cases like coding, but for one tool that could handle agentic workflows with minimal oversight and configuration, it's the best.
Hope Meta doesn't hose it.
- It says:
"Our top priority is ensuring that this change won't be disruptive for our customers. We will continue to sell and operate our product subscription service through our app and website. The company will continue to operate from Singapore."
But I suppose they won't try as hard as before to make the product better. It's such a shame. I've been using it since it launched the video by begging everyone I knew and got an invite code. And I've been on the higher end of subscription ever since.
Curious how much Meta paid them.
- I used trial of Manus and it was in no way better than GPT. And they are using publicly available models only.
by joshuamerrill
2 subcomments
- The evidence is pretty clear, and it keeps growing. Social media causes real harm, both to individuals and to society. It is addictive by design, it worsens mental health especially for kids, and it rewards outrage and misinformation. In that way, social media looks a lot like smoking. It was widely adopted before we understood the risks, then aggressively pushed because it was profitable.
Meta did more than just take part in this system. It perfected it, scaled it worldwide, and resisted meaningful change until public pressure or regulation forced its hand.
That is why it is worrying to see Meta present itself as a trusted builder of the next major technology wave. When a company repeatedly puts growth ahead of social harm, skepticism is not bias. It is common sense. Giving that company even more powerful and less transparent tools should cause us alarm.
by meander_water
0 subcomment
- I'd like someone to do a comparison of tech company valuations pre GenAI vs post for the same vertical.
I understand there's always some optimism for new tech, but the valuations we're seeing seems absurd to me.
Like, do they expect to see x100 profit for the same vertical? Obviously some new markets have been created, but I don't see them solving any particularly novel business problems.
by Taikhoom10
0 subcomment
- https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/meta-buys-ai-startup-manus-addin...
2 billion is the price.
by MangoCoffee
1 subcomments
- "I left Meta because I made a bet that models were going to commoditized and the value would be in products on top of models, but MetaMate and GenAI were highly politicized sucking up all oxygen in the room."
- Erik Meijer
https://x.com/headinthebox/status/2005873104317497426?s=20
I found Erik's takes on this is interesting.
by CuriouslyC
0 subcomment
- Meta spending billions on a company developing a product that will be totally commoditized.
Guess it's a good follow on to spending billions to try and catch up in LLMs, which will also be commoditized.
- I do think Manus had a better approach than some of the competitors of the space, allowing for far more agentic flows (ie manus would run its own code, debug, write and run tests, etc). Lovable or v0 by contrast are quite primitive. Very unfortunate that they are a part of meta now, where mark will likely micromanage and destroy the core value of the product.
by kippinitreal
0 subcomment
- Wrote up some thoughts on what their financials may look like. Quick take is that they probably need cash fast!
https://kippinitreal.substack.com/p/manus-acquisition-though...
by visioninmyblood
3 subcomments
- Meta was lacking behind on the agents space. This is a good capture but they are making crazy good offers but not turning them into killer products so far. The AI agents space is picking up in 20206. Next they will hire voice agents like ElevenLabs and Cartesia, visual Agents like VLM Run or Landing AI and then web browsing agents.
by howmayiannoyyou
2 subcomments
- Manus was pretty damn good at delivering impressive results well before other providers. I stopped using it because I was concerned about data privacy and and whatever extent one particular foreign country might (or might not) have hooks into Manus. Now that Meta has purchased them I know I'm safe ((sarcasm)).
I have many questions:
- Will Meta fuck this up as they seem (in my opinion) to do with most of the acquisitions? Oculus? Drop.io?
- Did they grossly overpay?
- Will innovation slow to a crawl (eg. Instagram, Whatsapp)?
- Will Manus' top talent bail?
- How is it conceivable Meta couldn't build this themselves. It can't possibly have been Manus' user base they were after, can it?
- How much trouble am I in for telling my wife to sell her Meta stock two weeks ago?
The acquisition is confusing to me.
- > This announcement is more than just a headline—it's validation of our pioneering work with General AI Agents.
Is it, now?
- It is nice that most people have a good grasp of Latin vocabulary and immediately recognize the word for “hand” because otherwise you’d probably get questions like “is the name of your product being eighty percent ‘anus’ intentional?” and so on
by rokhayakebe
2 subcomments
- Sometimes I feel people are just jealous. If Meta is so ready to throw money why don't these people just build something and sell it to them for billions in 6 months. Join the winning side instead of complaining.
by joshcsimmons
0 subcomment
- This was one of the worst apps I've ever used around their launch. Logging in recently it looks like a generic chat now? I'm not sure what their product is.
- We are launching a similar tool (but more human) and made in EU.
If you are curious: https://Geta.Team
- NateBJones on Manus:
https://youtu.be/DAxARHKQAXs
- I think this might be a good acquisition for Meta; we are moving into the stage where backend models matter less and it is more about the users, the user interface, and the growth. A healthy sign.
- > our agent has processed more than 147 Trillion tokens and powered the creation of over 80 Million virtual computers
These numbers sound like from their internal testing instead of from real customer base.
by andrewinardeer
2 subcomments
- Nothing about how much Meta paid for Manus. Is this an actual accuquisition?
- Meta needed consumer product along with foundational model. Manus gives them consumer product now. Pure speculation - must be 5B+ acquisition given their revenue run rate.
It seems M&A door is wide open for 2026.
- So what happens when they swap Claude for Llama under the hood?
- Totally forgot Manus existed. It’s funny they’re so eager to tell us this acquisition means they are a pioneer. Imagine pioneering agentic LLM usage - surely you’d be buying Meta!
- Oh I remember them, I completely forgot Abt them since they went briefly viral on x
- Why Meta and not OAI/Anthropic or Google? Is this their attempt after llama4?
- A random thought. Metaverse is more interesting if manus get integrated into it
- No way they called a company "Manus". No way.
- Did the founders have a nice leisurely walk in the park with Mark
- Literally days ago they were flexing on here. Hilarious.
by throw-12-16
0 subcomment
- So I guess the crypto exodus to AI is paying off.
- > This announcement is more than just a headline—it's validation of our pioneering work with General AI Agents.
Anyone else thought this was satire when they read that as the second line in the announcement?
I literally laughed, then clicked the top left logo, to check out the homepage and see if this `ManuAI` was a real website.
---
You would think that they would know better to at least edit that out.
It's not just ironic -- it's cosmically poetic.
by kodefreeze
1 subcomments
- Interesting that Meta is acquiring a Chinese company.
I was a fan of their initial product but I find it slower than chatpgpt agent mode. And the pricing is not great for individual users.
by reactordev
0 subcomment
- If you can’t beat em. Buy someone who can.
- If I read one more article/press release/whatever with such clumsy use of antithesis, I’m going to go insane. I have no problem with using AI to write if it is done well, but this…
- I’m an early use of Manus. I’m very impressed with it. That’s all I can say.
I hope the great product continues.
by llmslave2
1 subcomments
- Who?
- weird timing given they just announced new revenue
- i thought mAnus was a joke app
by MagicMoonlight
1 subcomments
- Why do people buy these slop companies? An API wrapper isn’t some new technology. You get nothing from it.
by shevy-java
0 subcomment
- I don't like it.
by yanhangyhy
1 subcomments
- sounds like another joke on Meta..
- [dead]
- Bummer. Manus was the best actual agent for my money. I literally have it working for me right now so I can goof off on HN… no joke.
- I'm always baffled by the language used for acquisitions. More correct would be, "ManusAI gets bought off by Meta".
- I don't get the negative sentiment wrt Manus. It was the best product in its area from the beginning, eclipsing anything US produced prior to it; only later US companies started catching up. I have a bitter taste in my mouth from Meta getting it and likely destroying it later as I used it with great outcomes for some recent research I did at Stanford.