Manus AI Founders Seek $1B to Buy Out Meta Acquisition Following Chinese Regulatory Block
The co-founders of Singapore-headquartered artificial intelligence startup Manus are actively structuring a massive capital raise of approximately $1 billion from new institutional investors. The strategic financing round is designed to execute a comprehensive equity restructuring and completely unwind the company's prior cross-border acquisition by Meta Platforms Inc., which closed in December last year for an implied valuation exceeding $2 billion.
According to institutional sources familiar with the private deliberations, the three co-founders—Xiao Hong, Ji Yichao, and Zhang Tao—are evaluating an independent buyback mechanism. The proposed funding round aims to appraise Manus at a target valuation that at least matches or exceeds the baseline price paid by the American social networking giant. This architecture would effectively reverse the change of control, transitioning the firm's capital distribution and voting blocks back to the founders and a new syndicate of regional backers.
Geopolitical Headwinds and Cross-Border Jurisdictions
This corporate maneuver follows severe regulatory intervention by Beijing. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) of China initiated an extensive compliance review into the transaction, citing potential violations of national foreign investment and technology export control laws. Chinese regulators expressed deep concerns over the potential outflow of sensitive, indigenous intellectual property to a foreign entity, ultimately ordering California-based Meta to completely unwind the asset purchase.
While Manus successfully relocated its primary corporate headquarters and essential personnel to Singapore in mid-2025 to facilitate the acquisition under an offshore holding structure (Butterfly Effect Pte. Ltd.), the NDRC has maintained a "substance over form" legal position. Regulators assert that because the foundational algorithms, underlying training data models, and early engineering teams originated within mainland China (specifically across research labs in Beijing and Wuhan), the platform remains firmly within the sovereign cross-border enforcement net of Chinese technology guardrails.
The Frontier of Agentic AI Infrastructure
Manus occupies a leading position in the global software landscape through its development of general-purpose "Agentic AI"—autonomous systems engineered to function as digital employees. The software can plan, reason, and independently execute highly complex digital operations, cross-reference data arrays, and conduct macro research with minimal human supervision.
Wall Street and legal analysts emphasize that a successful execution of this $1 billion buyback could establish a precedent for cross-border technology mergers and acquisitions. Reversing an integrated tech acquisition months after capital transfers, employee migrations, and infrastructure merging have already taken place presents an unprecedented corporate challenge. If completed, the financial turnaround will offer a template for unwinding corporate ownership structures under sudden regulatory duress, redefining how multinational technology giants manage cross-border compliance risks amid tightening US-China technological competition.