Manus comes home: How Beijing unwinds Meta's $2 billion deal

Last year, an AI startup from Beijing made headlines worldwide. Manus presented what it said was the first general AI agent: software that plans and executes tasks independently instead of just answering questions.

To operate more independently internationally, Manus moved operations from China to Singapore. In December, Meta swooped in and paid $2 billion for Manus. It was part of the big agentic AI plan.

Now Beijing is unwinding the deal.

Beijing's new lever

In April, China's regulatory authorities stepped in. The reason: national security. AI with Chinese roots should not fall into foreign hands.

• This is the first time Beijing has publicly used its outbound investment security review to unwind a cross-border AI acquisition. The deal was already signed. Beijing is reversing it anyway.

Meta drew the consequences. By June 11, the group separated Manus, cut the data lines, and prohibited its own employees from using Manus tools.

Buyback at friendship price

Back comes Manus to a familiar trio: Tencent, ZhenFund, and HSG, former Sequoia Capital China. The same investors who had financed the company before Meta.

The price: $2 billion. Exactly as much as the sale to Meta.

But Manus is a different company today. In six months under Meta's roof, annualized revenue climbed from around $100 million to $400 to $500 million. Beijing lets China's investors buy back a business that has grown many times over at the old price.

Tencent becomes the largest shareholder but remains in the minority. Manus itself is to remain independent.

Not just China

This is not purely Chinese practice. Washington draws this line too. When foreign money wants into American top labs, the US government reviews it, and stakes in houses like Anthropic are regularly fought over.

For Washington and Beijing alike, leading AI is now critical infrastructure, on a par with ports, power grids, chips. And that stays in-house.

For Meta, in the end: $2 billion in, $2 billion out, six months of buildout work gifted away, and an AI agent that now belongs to China again.

FROM THE TEAM

Last week we brought one of Germany's largest AI YouTube channels directly to humanoid robots, which still sound like science fiction in Germany. That's what it's all about for us: everyone reads about these robots. But getting access is almost impossible. That's exactly our daily bread.

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CHART OF THE WEEK 

Most of the money in a humanoid robot goes into movement. Actuators – the motors and gearboxes in the joints – account for around 40 percent of hardware costs, since a robot needs 28 to 40 of them. The price therefore depends mainly on which expensive components are used.

A Unitree G1 costs only around $16,000 because it forgoes complex hands and sensors.

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5 STORIES YOU MISSED LAST WEEK 

🇨🇳 Unitree gets green light for its IPO: China's best-known robot maker from Hangzhou received approval from the securities regulator last week for a listing on Shanghai's STAR Market and wants to raise around 4.2 billion yuan ($619 million) at a targeted valuation of up to 40 billion yuan ($5.9 billion). In 2025, Unitree generated 1.69 billion yuan in revenue, and the share of humanoids jumped to 51.5% in the first nine months, up from 27.6% for the entire previous year. In 2025 alone, the company delivered over 5,500 humanoids. The process was completed in 104 days, the fastest review run in STAR Market history. The money flows into AI models, new robot product lines, and its own smart factory. When a robot dog manufacturer gets through review this quickly, it also shows how determined Beijing is pushing this sector to market.

🇯🇵 Japan allocates $6.2 billion for a national Physical AI model: The Industry Ministry METI is committing up to 1 trillion yen ($6.2 billion) over five years to the Noetra consortium, supported by SoftBank, Sony, NEC, and Honda, with around 44 participating companies. A first tranche of 387.3 billion yen flows this fiscal year, the rest is tied to annual targets. Unlike a chatbot, this is about AI trained on data from Japanese industrial companies, for factories, robots, and vehicles. By 2040, Tokyo wants to bring 10 million AI robots to 18 industries, including gastronomy and medicine. The move shows Japan's calculation: it's falling behind on language models, so it's betting on Physical AI for factories and manufacturing, where its industry is still strong.

🇨🇳 China expects over 100,000 humanoids from domestic manufacturing in 2026: At the opening press conference for the World Conference on Artificial Intelligence (WAIC) in Shanghai, Gan Xiaobin, vice director at the Industry Ministry MIIT, said China's production of humanoids will exceed the 100,000 unit mark this year. He attributed this to China's rapidly maturing language models and AI agents driving the robotics sector. For context: just last week, Morgan Stanley raised its forecast for China's humanoid deliveries in 2026 to 50,000 units, which is just half of the production now anticipated. That's exactly where the industry's crux lies – robots are being built much faster than they're finding real jobs.

🇨🇳 Ant Group leads a $74 million round for household robot startup Zeroth: The Chinese embodied AI company for household robots raised 74 million in a pre-Series A, led by Ant Group, with Geely Capital, 37 Interactive Entertainment, and Hua Capital on board. Total funding now stands at around $147 million. Zeroth reports over 30,000 orders and revenue growth of 600% in the first half versus the previous year. The money flows into six technology areas, from actuator modules to its own robot arms, plus talent and international expansion. Notably, who's investing: with Ant and Geely, a fintech giant and an automaker are entering household robots – the bets no longer come just from robotics players.

🇰🇷 South Korea builds a cluster for mass production of humanoids: The government is investing 5.8 billion in a robot manufacturing park in Saemangeum in the country's southwest, including its own foundry and supplier cluster for startups lacking production capacity. Hyundai is the anchor: the group is using its Boston Dynamics subsidiary and the Korean supply chain to build 30,000 Atlas humanoids annually by 2028. By then, Korea wants to bring humanoids into regular operation in ten industries and train 10,000 people as AI robotics experts. The government openly states its goal: to be among the global top three in AI robots. Korea is leaning on its own strength, the auto and supplier industry, which provides the robotics sector with parts and manufacturing expertise.

ALSO LAST WEEK 

🇨🇳 China's AI chip industry depends on a single factory, and it's completely overloaded. The fast chips that power artificial intelligence can only be made in China by the state-owned company SMIC, no other domestic factory is technically advanced enough. Right now, 15 chip companies are crowding around this scarce capacity. And even then, only about one in five of the most difficult chips is usable, the rest is waste. As long as nothing changes, China can't replace Nvidia.

🇨🇳 Coffee robot maker Yingzhi XBOT raises around 400 million yuan ($56 million) in a Series B. Its machines brew coffee independently, over 1,000 of them are already in more than 100 cities and have dispensed over 4 million cups combined. In China, robots are moving from the factory floor to the checkout counter.

🇮🇳 India puts its third chip factory into operation, Prime Minister Modi opened the plant in Gujarat. The CG Semi facility, built with Japanese chipmaker Renesas for around $900 million, assembles and tests finished chips and achieves 300 million units per year at full capacity. India is thus gradually bringing part of chip manufacturing back to its own country, which so far has taken place almost exclusively in East Asia.

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