Manus

2026-10-08

STARTUPS · 1 SOURCE · TechCrunch AI

China’s AI startup Manus raises over $500M in first funding round since Meta split

Manus, the AI lab under parent Butterfly Effect, said it raised more than $500 million in a funding round led by Boyu Capital and IDG Capital, with participation from existing investors including Tencent, HSG and ZhenFund. This is the company’s first financing since the collapse of a planned $2 billion acquisition by Meta; Manus has launched Manus 2.0 and the Cue app, is hiring internationally, and is reportedly considering a Hong Kong IPO.

7.0

2026-09-29

STARTUPS · 1 SOURCE · The Decoder

Manus 2.0 launches platform to run phone-based agents, edit video, and host multiplayer games

Manus 2.0 turns the company’s agent into a broader platform: users can now edit video and develop/host multiplayer games in a desktop app (Manus Studio), run personal agents reachable by their own phone numbers, and remotely direct approved files and apps on their machines via a "Computer Use" feature. A tested Cascade agent configuration used 23.2% fewer tokens and cost 32% less to run than the prior system; a separate Cue app (in free early access by invite) gives each agent an email address, wallet, and cloud computer. The release is available now.

6.0

2026-09-20

MODELS · 1 SOURCE · The Decoder

Tencent unveils Gander, a real-time multimodal agent with separate 'cerebellum' and swappable 'brain'

Tencent researchers introduced Gander, a multimodal research model that processes speech, images, and text continuously and separates roles into a low-latency conversational "cerebellum" and a swappable reasoning "brain" for complex agent tasks. The team reports strong timing performance on Full-Duplex-Bench v3, admits weaker task accuracy and audiovisual perception in some tests, has a GitHub code repo and demos, and plans to release model weights and training data.

7.0

2026-09-18

STARTUPS · 1 SOURCE · TechCrunch AI

Manus in talks to raise $500M at $4B valuation after resuming independent operations

The Wall Street Journal reports that Chinese AI startup Manus is in discussions to raise $500 million at a $4 billion valuation as it resumes independent operations. Potential investors named include IDG Capital, Boyu Capital, CATL and existing backers Tencent, HSG and Zhenfund, and Manus is reportedly weighing a restructuring ahead of a possible Hong Kong IPO.

7.0