China’s high financial planner, the Nationwide Growth and Reform Fee (NDRC), mentioned on Monday it has blocked Meta’s $2 billion acquisition of Manus, an agentic AI startup based by Chinese language engineers that relocated to Singapore earlier than Mark Zuckerberg scooped it up late last year.
The transfer marks certainly one of China’s most important interventions in a cross-border deal, one which extends nicely past U.S.-China tensions and into the broader AI trade. For Meta, it may deal a severe blow to its ambitions within the fast-moving AI brokers area.
With no clarification supplied, China’s NDRC ordered each events to unwind the deal fully.
“The Nationwide Growth and Reform Fee (NDRC) has decided to ban overseas funding within the Manus venture in accordance with legal guidelines and rules, and has required the events concerned to withdraw the acquisition transaction,” it said.
However the scenario is way from easy. Round 100 Manus employees have already moved into Meta’s Singapore places of work as of March, with founders taking up government roles. CEO Xiao Hong now studies directly to Meta COO Javier Olivan. Manus CEO Hong and Chief Scientist Yichao Ji are reportedly beneath exit bans, stopping them from leaving mainland China.
“The transaction complied totally with relevant legislation. We anticipate an acceptable decision to the inquiry,” a spokesperson at Meta instructed TechCrunch.
Based in 2022 by Hong, Ji and Tao Zhang, Manus relocated its headquarters from China to Singapore round mid-2025. Simply months later, Meta got here knocking. The corporate introduced its acquisition of Manus in December 2025 for roughly $2 billion to $3 billion, with plans to fold its agent know-how straight into Meta AI.
Meta has agreed to amass Singapore-based AI startup Manus, with the deal requiring a full exit from Chinese language possession and operations, per Nikkei Asia. However the firm’s origins hint again to China. Manus’ founders beforehand established its guardian firm, Butterfly Impact, in Beijing in 2022 earlier than relocating to Singapore. That background has drawn scrutiny in Washington, the place Senator John Cornyn has already raised issues about Benchmark’s funding within the firm, questioning whether or not American capital needs to be flowing to a Chinese language-linked agency, TechCrunch identified, citing Cornyn’s post on X.
Manus didn’t reply to TechCrunch’s request for remark.
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