Piousbox

With just weeks to go before the Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing, China's National Development and Reform Commission unexpectedly blocked Meta Platforms' acquisition of the AI-agent startup Manus on Monday morning, signaling that Beijing has no problem with tightening control over high-value AI assets in a move that could have a profound chilling effect on Chinese M&A activity for years. 

According to the FT, the decision marks an extraordinary late-stage intervention by Beijing, involving two non-Chinese companies. Meta had already begun to integrate software from Manus, which was founded in China but relocated to Singapore last year.

The announcement comes ahead of an expected summit next month between US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, when the leaders will address longstanding tensions over trade.

Manus’s founders got their start in China but relocated their headquarters and key staff to Singapore in 2025. It wasn’t clear, when the deal took place, whether Beijing would exert its authority on a transaction that technically took place beyond its borders.

China’s powerful National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said on Monday it would prohibit “foreign investment” in Manus and in accordance with the law has “required the relevant parties to cancel the acquisition transaction”.  Regulators began investigating in January whether China’s investment rules had been violated by Silicon Valley-based Meta’s acquisition of Manus, whose autonomous AI tools can carry out complex tasks.

Manus allows users to build and run personal AI “agents” that are capable of independently executing complex tasks, managing files and creating software. The original creator of the company, AI start-up Butterfly Effect, was founded in China in 2022. Last year, Butterfly Effect moved its headquarters and core team to Singapore following a funding round led by top US venture capital firm Benchmark Capital.

The Manus app was an early forerunner of OpenClaw, which has taken both Silicon Valley and China by storm this year. Both go beyond the likes of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which largely focuses on processing information and answering questions.

Within months, Meta swooped in to buy the AI app, as part of the parent of Instagram and WhatsApp’s costly efforts to catch up with OpenAI and Google in AI. The $2bn deal was announced in December and closed earlier this year.

The current listing for what is described as “Manus from Meta” on Apple’s App Store still describes Butterfly Effect’s Singaporean entity as the software’s developer. 

It was unclear how the acquisition could be unwound at such a late stage, and a person briefed on Beijing’s decision told the FT the announcement could be intended primarily as a warning for similar deals in the future. The person said the gesture was “pretty harsh and it carries a strong intention to stop follow-on deals [like Manus]. In reality, it’s hard to unwind a done deal, so it is more about verbal warnings on similar deals and [leverage] building before the Xi-Trump summit”.

To undo the deal at this stage, Meta could have to spin off its acquisition to a new buyer, sell it back to its former investors or find new backers. Any such process would be complex, as Meta has already integrated Manus into some of its tools, the FT has reported.

“The Manus block is a clarifying moment,” said Ke Yan, a tech analyst with DZT Research based in Singapore. “Manus was Singapore-incorporated with founders based here, and it still got pulled back. Beijing’s signal is that what matters isn’t where the legal entity sits.”

A Meta spokesperson said: “The transaction complied fully with applicable law. We anticipate an appropriate resolution to the inquiry.”

Multiple Chinese regulators have reviewed the transaction, including the NDRC, the commerce ministry and China’s antitrust watchdog, the FT reported this month. Beijing earlier branded the acquisition a “conspiratorial” attempt to hollow out the country’s technology base.

Officials had been examining the deal using a range of tools, from export control rules to foreign investment and competition laws, the people said. In March, Beijing restricted two co-founders of Manus from leaving the country as the deal was reviewed.

Manus describes itself as an “action engine” that can “extend your human reach”. It launched in March 2025, just two months after DeepSeek’s debut of a powerful open-source model capable of “reasoning” sparked a panic among US tech investors about Chinese AI advances.

The Manus acquisition represents the second major deal in which Beijing has intervened, following the sale by CK Hutchison of 43 global ports, originally including two in Panama, to a BlackRock-backed consortium. In that case, authorities pushed for the acquiring party to include a Chinese group as well, although that deal has not yet closed.

The ruling is likely to send a chill through China’s burgeoning AI sector, and emerged weeks before a high-profile summit between US President Donald Trump and China’s Xi Jinping. Beijing has tightened scrutiny of key industry firms in the wake of the deal, which has been largely completed. Initially hailed as a template for startups with global aspirations, critics have since lamented the loss of valuable technology to a geopolitical rival.

The decree on Manus may deal a setback to Meta as it looks to compete in AI against rivals from Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google to OpenAI and Anthropic PBC. Manus was supposed to help Meta — which had been playing catchup — leapfrog into a leading position in the hot sphere of AI agents, or services that use artificial intelligence to execute tasks.

Beijing and Washington are jockeying for leverage ahead of their historic meeting in May. As rivalry heats up in the AI space, Xi is trying to both fence off China’s top technology and talent from the US with the Manus move, while underscoring his growing confidence in homegrown chips, Bloomberg reported.

The latter point was on display last week when DeepSeek unveiled its V4 model that boasts deeper synergy with Huawei Technologies Co. chips. That high-profile release looked timed to project confidence ahead of Trump’s visit.

“Beijing likely views this move as a justified tit-for-tat and mirroring of the export controls, investment restrictions, and counter-tech transfer probes by American authorities over the years,” said Brian Wong, an assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong.

Agencies including the National Development and Reform Commission have told key AI firms including Moonshot AI and Stepfun in recent weeks they should reject capital of US origin in funding rounds unless explicitly approved, Bloomberg News reported last week. Regulators have also decided on similar restrictions for ByteDance Ltd., the owner of TikTok and the most valuable startup in the country.

Those restrictions risk further isolating China’s recovering tech sector from the venture backing that has underpinned it for two decades, much of which was sourced from American pensions and endowments. It follows Beijing’s decision to restrict “red chips” — a type of Chinese company incorporated overseas — from seeking initial public offerings in Hong Kong, threatening to upend a decades-old playbook that helped Chinese companies tap foreign capital by floating overseas.

The overarching intent of the restrictions is to prevent US investors from taking stakes in sensitive sectors where national security is a priority. The twin moves suggest that regulators are worried about a leakage of homegrown technology abroad as Chinese-founded startups and companies explore international opportunities. In the wake of the Manus acquisition, many academics decried the loss of a valuable asset to the US. Many worried that the deal would encourage other startups to follow suit.