China probes Meta's acquisition of Singapore AI firm Manus

China is investigating whether Meta’s acquisition of Manus, a Singapore-based artificial intelligence start-up with Chinese roots, complied with Chinese rules on technology exports and outbound investment, the Ministry of Commerce said. The ministry is evaluating whether the deal, completed last month, violated rules that require government approval for the export of certain technologies, including interactive A.I.

systems, a spokesman, He Yadong, said. Manus was founded by Chinese engineers and had a Chinese parent company; it drew attention after launching an A.I. agent last March that could be directed to build websites and perform basic coding tasks and by December said it had surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue.

Manus trained its agent using systems from Alibaba and Anthropic, and two early investors were former employees of Robinhood. The inquiry comes as Meta capped a year of heavy spending on A.I. researchers, including a $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI last June, and as regulators in Washington and Beijing debate the future of TikTok’s U.S.

operations and potential limits on Chinese access to chips made by Nvidia. Chinese officials have urged firms to buy domestic chips and warned Nvidia’s chips may carry risks. A professor, Cui Fan, wrote in a blog post that such regulatory scrutiny forces Chinese start-ups to choose between serving the domestic market or pursuing global audiences.

Key Topics

Business, Meta, Manus, Export Controls, Singapore, Nvidia