Manus, the AI agent startup that spent much of the year being dismantled out of Meta, picked a pointed moment to relaunch. On Monday — weeks after formally restoring its independence and with a reported \$500 million round in motion at a \$4 billion valuation — the company shipped Manus 2.0, a ground-up rebuild of its agent platform, plus Cue, a standalone app for personal agents.
The engineering centerpiece is Cascade, the newest generation of Manus's in-house agent framework. Its premise is that agents are wasteful because they load everything up front: Cascade keeps a project minimal at the start and attaches specialized tools only when the execution chain actually needs them. In one company-reported test configuration, Cascade used 23.2% fewer tokens, finished tasks 28.2% faster, and cost 32% less to run than the previous system. Independent verification is still pending — Manus has not published how the test was run — so treat the numbers as a vendor benchmark, not a universal result.
Around the framework, 2.0 reassembles the platform into a full workspace. Cloud Computer gives projects a persistent, always-on server environment — the sandbox no longer dies when the task ends, which matters for game servers and long-running automations. Automations replace fixed schedules with event triggers: a new email, an ad-metrics anomaly, a calendar entry, a Slack message or a Notion edit can all wake the agent and set a workflow in motion. The desktop client becomes Manus Studio, adding a video editor built for 30-to-60-second ads, tutorials and vlogs — with an "Alchemy" mode where the AI acts as creative director — and a game development environment with one-click multiplayer hosting.
The more radical product is Cue. Each personal agent in Cue carries a complete digital identity: its own email address, phone number, virtual wallet and cloud computer. Agents can be pulled into group chats with a broad goal — one scouting venues, one comparing vendor quotes, one drafting the keynote — and coordinate among themselves. They can answer your phone and take notes, and spend money on APIs or online services within a budget you set. In one demo scenario, scanning a QR code at a restaurant table lets an agent order food according to your dietary preferences and join the waiting list. Cue is in limited early access — free, activated with the invite code MEETCUE, initially capped at about 1,000 users, with the iOS build awaiting App Store review.
The backstory makes the launch unusually dramatic. Manus went from obscure Chinese startup to global agent sensation after its March 2025 debut, relocated to Singapore, and drew a reported \$2 billion acquisition approach from Meta late last year. The deal collapsed under Chinese regulatory scrutiny over agent technology — Beijing effectively forced the unwinding — and by July the founding team had bought the equity back at roughly the original \$2 billion valuation, with Benchmark exiting and Tencent reportedly stepping in as the largest outside investor. The company resumed fully independent operations on September 1, after operating separately from Meta since May and destroying user data accumulated during the acquisition period.
The business, by outside accounts, never stopped growing: reporting puts Manus's revenue run rate at roughly \$90 million in August 2025, rising to about \$125 million by December. Backers include Benchmark (historically), Tencent, HSG and ZhenFund. The company has also said it is building a team for a China-market product in cooperation with domestic model vendors.
The real signal in Cue is where the agent economy is heading. When an agent owns an email address, a phone number and a wallet, the competitive question stops being which model is smarter and becomes who holds the account, who clears the payment, and who takes the cut. Manus — the company that first made agentic loops usable by people who can't code — is betting that identity and payments, not model quality alone, are the next moat. Meta's Muse, which grabbed the free-agent limelight while Manus sat in regulatory limbo, now has an answer.
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