AI Agent Startup Manus Close to $500M Funding at $4B Valuation
AI agent startup Manus is reportedly close to completing a $500 million funding round that will double its valuation to $4 billion. This represents its first fundraising effort since spinning off from Meta and resuming independent operations. The proposed round demonstrates strong investor confidence in specialized AI agent platforms, even as foundation model prices fall and competition intensifies. If finalized, the deal will cement Manus as the highest-valued AI agent startup in China. Prior to this round, Manus's founders and existing backers (Tencent, HSG, and ZhenFund) bought back Meta's stake at a $2 billion valuation, making Tencent its largest institutional investor. Manus does not train its foundation models from scratch and faces direct competition from general-purpose models like Anthropic's Claude and Moonshot's Kimi that perform desktop automation tasks.
## BACKGROUND
An AI agent is a software system capable of autonomously executing multi-step tasks and workflows on behalf of users rather than just generating text responses. Developed by Butterfly Effect, Manus is a general AI agent that operates through a virtual environment to build custom web tools and execute automated tasks.