China is investigating whether Meta’s acquisition of AI startup Manus violated its technology export and overseas investment laws.
Under these regulations, the export of certain technologies must receive approval from the Chinese government, including interactive artificial intelligence systems. Manus is headquartered in Singapore but was founded by Chinese engineers, and its parent company is based in China. Beijing has previously asserted, on similar grounds, that it has final approval authority over any sale of TikTok’s U.S. business.
On Thursday, Ministry of Commerce spokesperson He Yadong said the ministry is assessing whether Meta’s acquisition of Manus last month violated these rules.
In March last year, Manus launched an AI agent — a tool capable of autonomously building websites and completing other basic coding tasks — which attracted attention in Silicon Valley. At the time, the U.S. tech industry was reeling after Chinese startup DeepSeek announced it had built a high-performance AI system at a fraction of the cost of leading U.S. companies. By December last year, Manus said its annual recurring revenue had exceeded $100 million.
Meta’s acquisition of Manus capped a year of heavy spending by the Silicon Valley company on artificial intelligence researchers.
Last June, Meta made its largest investment since acquiring WhatsApp in 2014, investing $14.3 billion in Scale AI, a startup focused on training data for AI systems. Meta did not disclose the specific terms of the Manus deal.
China’s investigation comes as Washington and Beijing are closely watching the fate of TikTok’s U.S. business and whether regulators will block Chinese companies from obtaining AI chips made by U.S. chipmaker Nvidia.
Beijing officials have urged Chinese companies to buy domestically produced chips and warned that Nvidia’s chips may pose risks.
For many Chinese tech startups, building the next global breakout product like TikTok is a shared ambition. But no company wants to repeat the experience of TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance, whose executives were questioned in the U.S. Congress over the company’s ties to the Chinese government.
Intense scrutiny from regulators in both Washington and Beijing has forced Chinese entrepreneurs to choose between two growth paths: focusing on the Chinese market or targeting global users outside China. For companies unable to access international investors, the former is often the only viable option.
Cui Fan, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, wrote in a blog post that Chinese officials need to balance these companies’ growth prospects when drafting technology export control rules.
Neither Meta nor Manus immediately responded to requests for comment.
In training its AI agent, Manus used AI systems developed by multiple companies, including China’s Alibaba and U.S.-based Anthropic. The company’s early investors include two former employees of investment app Robinhood.
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