Meta has acquired a Chinese-founded artificial intelligence (AI) start-up, Manus, to boost its products for businesses including its advertising arm.
The deal is said to be valued between $2-3bn, according to sources with direct knowledge of the transaction.
Manus has built a general purpose AI agent that can independently execute complex tasks such as market research, coding and data analysis. It services millions of users and businesses globally.
The company hit the headlines in early 2025 after it claimed to be the first AI agent capable of making decisions and automating tasks with less prompting than its rivals such as ChatGPT, Claude and DeepSeek.
Commentators dubbed the firm ‘China’s next DeepSeek’, which prompted Manus to move its headquarters to Singapore in order to curb risks from US-China tensions.
Meta has said it will continue to operate and sell the Manus service as well as integrate it into its own products.
Xiao Hong, CEO of Manus, added: “Joining Meta allows us to build on a stronger, more sustainable foundation without changing how Manus works or how decisions are made.
“We’re excited about what the future holds with Meta and Manus working together and we will continue to iterate the product and serve users that have defined Manus from the beginning.”
For affiliates, this signals a shift in the AI race with the focus now on how technology uses intelligence and turns it into outcomes.
Charles F Manning, CEO and President of adtech firm Kochava, believes this move by the social media giant will provide the framework for agentic ad buying.
Manning wrote on LinkedIn: “I believe manus will be the framework for agentic ad buying for Meta advertisers as the next ‘black box’ to make the Meta ad engine operate with autonomy.”
He listed a few examples which included using Manus within Meta to build campaign briefs and thus allocating more media spend to it in the process; using it to understand where to buy media based on app rankings by region; and to research where and how to allocate spend by audience segment, thus giving it access to your first-party data.
“This is a smart strategy for Meta. We anticipated a move like this by them and expect similar moves by other major publishers,” added Manning.
Manus will continue to operate out of Singapore.