Meta this year has been strengthening its AI investments through acquisitions and aggressively poaching talent from rivals.
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Meta Platforms has agreed to acquire Chinese founded AI startup Manus, which went viral earlier this year after it released demo videos of its autonomous AI agent.
"Manus is joining Meta to bring a leading agent to billions of people and unlock opportunities for businesses across our products," said Meta in a statement without disclosing the financial details of the transaction.
Media reports pegged the deal value at $2-$3 billion.
It added that Manus's talent will join Meta's team to deliver general-purpose agents across its consumer and business products, including in Meta AI.
The statement noted that since the release of the agent earlier this year, it has processed more than 147 trillion tokens and powered the creation of over 80 million virtual computers.
“Joining Meta allows us to build on a stronger, more sustainable foundation without changing how Manus works or how decisions are made,” said Xiao Hong, CEO of Manus, in a separate statement.
Earlier this year, Manus raised $75 million led by US venture capital firm Benchmark.
Meta this year has been strengthening its AI investments through acquisitions and aggressively poaching talent from rivals.
Earlier this year, the tech giant acquired a 49% stake in data labeling startup Scale AI and brought in its CEO Alexandr Wang to lead its newly formed Superintelligence Labs.
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