The Chinese AI agent provider Manus is returning to independence after the forced separation from Meta. The company announced on August 11 that it has completed the buyback by former investors Tencent, ZhenFund, and HSG for around two billion dollars. User data from the Meta era will be deleted for two days starting August 23, unless it is backed up beforehand.
Tencent buys in as the largest individual shareholder
The investor group around Tencent, ZhenFund, and the investment company HSG, also known as Sequoia China, is acquiring Manus for an amount that is again around two billion dollars – the same price that Meta paid in December 2025. According to Nikkei Asia, Tencent is taking the largest individual share but remains a minority shareholder; no party has published exact shareholding ratios. The former major investor in Manus, Benchmark, is not participating in the buyback and thus completely loses its stake in the startup.
Notably, the valuation compared to revenue growth: At the time of the Meta acquisition, Manus generated about 100 million dollars in recurring annual revenue, which was approximately twenty times that amount. An assessment by EBC Financial Group estimates revenue to reach around 500 million dollars by July 2026 (independently unverified) – thus, the buyback price is only four times the annual revenue. The politically forced exit significantly depressed the price of the once sought-after agent startup, even though the business has grown considerably in the meantime.
Beijing forces the unwinding in April
China’s economic planning agency NDRC ordered the unwinding of the deal as early as April 2026, based on the national review of foreign investments. The agency assessed agent AI as a strategic technology and feared, according to CNBC, the outflow of valuable technology to a geopolitical rival. According to several legal experts, it was the first publicly confirmed case in which Beijing used this review mechanism to reverse a completed cross-border AI acquisition. Manus CEO Xiao Hong and research director Ji Yichao had to appear in Beijing in March 2026 and were not allowed to leave China during the review.
As reported in July, Tencent was already negotiating with Manus’ former investors about a buyback at the original purchase price at that time. These negotiations are now complete. The case is considered one of the clearest interventions by Beijing against a cross-border AI acquisition by a US company and is likely to make other US corporations more cautious about investments in Chinese AI startups in the future. Meta originally acquired Manus to compensate for its own weaknesses in autonomous AI agents and loses direct access to one of the most widely used agent platforms outside the US with the withdrawal.
User data from the Meta era is set for deletion
For users, the separation has practical consequences. Data generated since the acquisition on December 29, 2025, will be deleted from August 23 to 24, according to company information, unless affected users back it up beforehand; the deadline for this ends on August 23 at 7:59 AM Singapore time, corresponding to 1:59 AM Central European Summer Time. From August 25, backed-up data can be restored. The company emphasizes that this step is not the result of a security incident but serves to comply with regulatory requirements in certain jurisdictions – which countries are specifically meant remains open.
Affected accounts will remain free to use until August 23, and after restoration, Manus promises additional credits as compensation. Users who created their accounts via Apple or Facebook login will find information only in the app itself, as in these cases, often no contact email is provided. Manus will also send several reminders via email and in-app messages. Unaffected users can continue to use the service unchanged, and no separate confirmation is required for them.
It remains open what new capabilities Manus intends to present as an independent company: The company announced additional features for its AI agents for the time after the separation but has not yet provided any details or a timeline. The next visible milestone is August 25, when affected users can restore their backed-up data.
