China’s National Development and Reform Commission announced on Monday that it will bar foreign investment in Manus and has ordered the parties to withdraw the acquisition, forcing Meta to unwind its roughly $2 billion purchase of the AI startup.
Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, said the transaction had complied with applicable law and that it expects an appropriate resolution to the regulator’s inquiry.
Manus gained attention for promoting a general AI agent framework that can perform tasks such as writing code, conducting market research and preparing budgets. The company does not operate its own large language model; its agent runs on top of existing Western LLMs.
Last year Manus closed its China offices and re‑incorporated in Singapore, a move intended to address both US restrictions on investment in Chinese AI firms and Chinese controls on the transfer of IP and capital. Meta announced the acquisition in December and had said there would be no continuing Chinese ownership.
The NDRC decision arrives amid growing China–US competition over AI, a sector Beijing considers central to economic strength and national security. China has recently made notable advances in the field — for example, the debut of its domestically developed DeepSeek model earlier this year briefly unsettled US tech stocks, including shares of Meta, Nvidia and Microsoft.
Analysts warn that Beijing’s intervention could set a precedent. Lian Jye Su, chief analyst at Omdia, said the move signals that China is willing to take a tough stance to protect AI talent and capabilities it considers national security assets, and that similar scrutiny of cross‑border deals involving deep‑tech companies may follow.