The last constraint from the Meta affair is gone. Exit restrictions on Manus founder Xiao Hong and chief scientist Ji Yichao have been lifted, Singapore daily Lianhe Zaobao reported on October 9, citing people familiar with the matter — and Xiao Hong has already resumed traveling between China and Singapore, where he appeared in person at the Manus 2.0 launch on September 28. The lifting of the travel bans, imposed during Beijing's review of Meta's attempted acquisition, is the clearest signal yet that the agentic-AI startup's "restart" is complete.
The bans dated to the deal itself. Meta agreed in December 2025 to buy Manus parent Butterfly Effect for more than $2 billion — one of the largest acquisitions in the company's history — but on April 27 the foreign-investment security review mechanism office under China's National Development and Reform Commission prohibited the transaction and ordered it unwound, with Chinese state media criticizing the arrangement as a "bathing-style" restructuring designed to skirt domestic oversight. During the review, both founders were barred from leaving China. The companies separated their systems, and Manus resumed independent operations on September 1.
The unwind itself was unusually orderly, according to a person close to the transaction who spoke to Zaobao. After the prohibition, Tencent, HSG (formerly Sequoia China) and other existing investors raised funds to buy Manus's shares back from Meta, letting the US company exit with its money returned. The round announced Thursday — more than $500 million led by Boyu Capital and IDG Capital, with Tencent, HSG and ZhenFund all returning — is entirely new capital on top of that buyback. Chinese media reports put Tencent's stake near 20 percent, which would make it the largest single shareholder, though the company has not confirmed the figure. The post-money valuation was not disclosed either; Bloomberg reported a target near $4 billion, roughly double what Meta had agreed to pay.
What the new capital does not change is the company's deliberately split geography. Zaobao reports that Manus's overseas headquarters remains in Singapore, even as the company expands in Beijing: on the day of the funding announcement it listed 17 open positions across product, R&D, operations and growth — every one of them based in the Chinese capital. Xiao Hong said on the Chinese social platform Jike that Manus 2.0, launched for overseas users on September 28 alongside the personal-agent app Cue, drew more than 1,000 resumes in a single day. The company is also reportedly preparing a product for the domestic Chinese market, which the overseas-focused 2.0 release does not serve.
The business has grown through the turbulence, though the numbers deserve their caveats. Manus said in December it had reached about $100 million in annual recurring revenue roughly eight months after its March 2025 launch — a company-reported figure — and Chinese media reports claim annualized revenue grew four- to five-fold during the dispute, to somewhere between $400 million and $500 million by June 2026. Neither figure has been independently verified, and the company declined to confirm the new round's valuation.
Analysts read the episode as more than one startup's good fortune. Lizzi C. Lee of the Asia Society Policy Institute called Manus's trajectory a "remarkable reversal": Beijing got the outcome it wanted — a blocked foreign takeover — and Chinese investors still valued the company at double Meta's price, a signal of how much domestic capital wants exposure to frontier AI applications. The person close to the deal told Zaobao that regulators achieved their goal while the equity structure rotated to Chinese-capital dominance, and suggested Manus's handling could serve as a template for how Beijing manages other cross-border Chinese AI companies. Talent-mobility control is already a standing instrument: reports earlier this year said senior AI staff at private firms including Alibaba and DeepSeek need approval before traveling abroad.
For founders everywhere building in the space between the US and Chinese ecosystems, Manus now offers a complete case study of all three outcomes at once: a blocked acquisition in which the buyer still gets made whole, founders freed only after the cap table is re-domesticated, and a dual-headquarters structure that keeps both markets in play. The company that once sold for $2 billion walked away from the sale, raised $500 million at double the price — and its founders can finally leave the country again.
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