Manus parent Butterfly Effect raises over $500M in new round

Butterfly Effect, the parent company of general-purpose AI agent developer Manus, announced on the 9th that it has closed an investment round of more than 500 million dollars. The round was co-led by Bow Capital and IDG Capital, according to aitimes.com.

Existing investors Tencent, HSG and ZhenFund also took part in the round. Butterfly Effect did not disclose the company's valuation.

Manus develops a general-purpose AI agent designed to handle research, information gathering and task automation with minimal human intervention.

Earlier separation from Meta

In December 2025, Meta agreed to acquire Manus for more than 2 billion dollars. In April, China's National Development and Reform Commission barred foreign investment in the Manus project, forcing the deal to be reversed; in August, Manus said it had completed its separation from Meta and resumed independent operations, deleting some user data in the process. Manus launched in China in early 2025, later took investment from US firm Benchmark and moved its staff to Singapore the same year. In September, on the 28th, it unveiled Manus 2.0, based on its Cascade execution system, along with the personal AI agent app Cue. In June, The Information reported that Manus's ARR had grown from 100 million dollars at the time of the Meta acquisition to around 500 million dollars, and Bloomberg reported that Manus was pursuing a valuation of 4 billion dollars in this round.