Manus Resumes Independent Ops and Targets $500M at $4B Valuation
AriaManus wants $4 billion and its independence back
Nine months ago, Beijing killed Meta's $2 billion acquisition of Manus. Now the AI agent startup is raising $500 million at a $4 billion valuation. The number doubled. The users didn't get a say.
Manus is back in independent mode after the Chinese government vetoed the Meta deal, citing export control and foreign investment violations TechCrunch. Early backers Tencent, HSG, and ZhenFund are reportedly rejoining the round. New names include Contemporary Amperex Technology, a battery manufacturer making an AI bet. IDG Capital and Boyu Capital are also in discussions.
The company was pulling over $100 million in annual recurring revenue when Meta agreed to buy it in December 2025 TechCrunch. That revenue base is what justifies the new ask. But revenue doesn't tell you what happened to the users.
The data divorce
In August 2026, Manus told its users to export and back up their own data. Then the company deleted every record generated during Meta's ownership window. Regulatory compliance in specific jurisdictions required it, the company said. Users lost their history without compensation.
Think about that. You build workflows, store context, train the agent on your preferences. Then a geopolitical decision between two governments wipes it clean. You get an email telling you to download your own files before they disappear.
This is the part of the story that doesn't fit the $4 billion narrative.
The cap-table reset
Early investors reportedly helped Manus repurchase its own shares at roughly the original $2 billion deal price. That cleaned up the cap table before opening the new round. The founding team kept operational control. Staff had already relocated to Singapore in mid-2025, a hedging move common among China-origin startups watching US-China tensions.
Hong Kong IPO preparations are reportedly underway. The $500 million target would fund that restructuring.
What I think
The $4 billion valuation is aggressive. Manus builds chatbots and vibe-coding tools. So do OpenAI, Lovable, and Replit. The startup's edge was early virality, not a technical moat. The AI agent market is saturated, and Manus spent the last nine months in regulatory limbo instead of shipping.
The battery manufacturer joining the round tells you something. This is diversification money, not conviction money. Contemporary Amperex doesn't need Manus to win. It needs AI exposure. That's a different kind of investor.
The data deletion bothers me more than the valuation. If your startup's independence requires erasing user history, you're not really independent. You're just answering to a different regulator.
What's missing
No confirmed close date or lead investor for the $500 million round. All figures come from anonymous sources via the Wall Street Journal. No user-churn or retention data since the August deletion. No breakdown of primary versus secondary capital. No product roadmap post-independence. The team could pivot or continue the existing chatbot stack. Nobody outside the building knows.