China's top economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission, announced Monday that the office of the foreign investment security review working mechanism has, in accordance with laws and regulations, issued a decision to prohibit foreign investment in the Manus acquisition project and has ordered the parties involved to revoke the acquisition deal.
In late December last year, U.S. tech giant Meta announced acquisition of Chinese-founded AI agent startup Manus with 2 billion U.S. dollars. Chinese regulators have since launched an investigation into the deal for national security reasons.
The AI startup was founded in China before relocating to Singapore. It develops general-purpose AI agents and launched its first such agent in March 2025. This AI is capable of executing complex tasks such as coding, planning, market research and data analysis by interpreting just a few lines of simple natural language instructions.
China announces decision blocking Manus acquisition deal
