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ManusAI Joins Meta

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Re: ManusAI Joins Meta

#131

Post by stingraycharles »

android521 wrote: post #91
chenzhekl wrote: post #63

This acquisition is a complete joke in China. From the very beginning, the company focused almost entirely on marketing. Then, after a few months, it fled China and relocated to Singapore. Now that it’s been acquired by Meta, you could say it has finally fulfilled its mission.

Mata acquired a great marketing team. Their marketing skills and hyping skills are far superior to their technical skils

How does due diligence work for these type of acquisitions, do they even have one? What do they think they’re buying? A team? Technology? A brand?

Re: ManusAI Joins Meta

#132

Post by uberdru »

imwally wrote: post #94
chenzhekl wrote: post #63

This acquisition is a complete joke in China. From the very beginning, the company focused almost entirely on marketing. Then, after a few months, it fled China and relocated to Singapore. Now that it’s been acquired by Meta, you could say it has finally fulfilled its mission.

I never heard of manus so I clicked the About Us page. Wow, it is insufferable.

I had to look. This tickled the copywriter in me: "Mission: To extend human reach by giving everyone the code to leverage their life." so you can leverage your life? never thought of that.

Re: ManusAI Joins Meta

#133

Post by tensor »

bigcat12345678 wrote: post #96
chenzhekl wrote: post #63

This acquisition is a complete joke in China. From the very beginning, the company focused almost entirely on marketing. Then, after a few months, it fled China and relocated to Singapore. Now that it’s been acquired by Meta, you could say it has finally fulfilled its mission.

I am Chinese and AI founder since 2023 This statement is completely baseless 1. Manus was never targeting Chinese domestic market, for obvious reasons 2. Manus was founded by successful founder with exit, backed toptier investors in China, they always have great reputation in the AI industry 3. Prior to manus' launch, the team developed Monica, as they are the frontier AI chat bot aggregator I really felt disgusted b…

It has nothing to do with being Chinese. The fact that the founder with previous connections is exactly what people are suggesting is a problem.

I think China will beat the US in AI but absolutely not using this silicon valley style bullshit model of valuation. Companies like the one that produced Deepseek using cutting edge academic research to do more with vastly less are hat will win. New algorithms will beat money. And the US has abandoned science, and thus it will lose.

Re: ManusAI Joins Meta

#134

Post by viccis »

thierrydamiba wrote: post #23
joshuamerrill wrote: post #9

The evidence is pretty clear, and it keeps growing. Social media causes real harm, both to individuals and to society. It is addictive by design, it worsens mental health especially for kids, and it rewards outrage and misinformation. In that way, social media looks a lot like smoking. It was widely adopted before we understood the risks, then aggressively pushed because it was profitable. Meta did more than just tak…

What’s the difference between social media and books? Or is your point that all entertainment is harmful to individuals and society?

Books are a medium that encourages literacy and helps understand others. Social media, in its current iteration, discourages curiosity and heightens conflict with others.

Re: ManusAI Joins Meta

#136

Post by torben-friis »

neilv wrote: post #126
kylecazar wrote: post #11

From their Wikipedia, because I had no idea who they were: "Following Manus's launch in March 2025, Butterfly Effect raised $75 million in a funding round led by Benchmark at a valuation of approximately $500 million in April 2025." Half a billion a month after launch and acquisition before the end of the same year. Wild times.

Yet the new AI startups I'm seeing are only offering terrible deals to early hires who could improve their chances of a nice exit. In this crazy environment -- in which money is flying around over AI much like the dotcom boom, but startup founders are using the last-decade playbook of not sharing the wealth with early hires -- I'm starting to think that smart AI job-seekers need to either: * get hired by a company th…

Bubble aside, it feels AI is by nature a less democratic tech.

The need for stupid amounts of data and hardware make it less likely that a really talented person can outcompete companies from their basement. That probably influences culture.

Re: ManusAI Joins Meta

#137

Post by maxall4 »

If I read one more article/press release/whatever with such clumsy use of antithesis, I’m going to go insane. I have no problem with using AI to write if it is done well, but this…

Re: ManusAI Joins Meta

#138

Post by neilv »

torben-friis wrote: post #136
neilv wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet the new AI startups I'm seeing are only offering terrible deals to early hires who could improve their chances of a nice exit. In this crazy environment -- in which money is flying around over AI much like the dotcom boom, but startup founders are using the last-decade playbook of not sharing the wealth with early hires -- I'm starting to think that smart AI job-seekers need to either: * get hired by a company th…

Bubble aside, it feels AI is by nature a less democratic tech. The need for stupid amounts of data and hardware make it less likely that a really talented person can outcompete companies from their basement. That probably influences culture.

True, but I think there's kitchen table opportunity in applications that don't need to do a big training, and that have tractable inferencing requirements.

The challenges I see are: (1) there's a lot of competition in the gold rush; (2) there's a lot of noise of AI slop implementations, including by anyone who sees your demo.

Re: ManusAI Joins Meta

#140

Post by oefrha »

bigcat12345678 wrote: post #96
chenzhekl wrote: post #63

This acquisition is a complete joke in China. From the very beginning, the company focused almost entirely on marketing. Then, after a few months, it fled China and relocated to Singapore. Now that it’s been acquired by Meta, you could say it has finally fulfilled its mission.

I am Chinese and AI founder since 2023 This statement is completely baseless 1. Manus was never targeting Chinese domestic market, for obvious reasons 2. Manus was founded by successful founder with exit, backed toptier investors in China, they always have great reputation in the AI industry 3. Prior to manus' launch, the team developed Monica, as they are the frontier AI chat bot aggregator I really felt disgusted b…

Manus attempted to ride the wave of DeepSeek and hired an army of influencers inside and outside of China, especially inside, to hype it up as the second coming of DeepSeek, even though they didn’t target the Chinese domestic market (as you correctly pointed out). IIRC it quickly became a joke in about two weeks after it became obvious that they were a thin layer on top of Claude and all marketing. I don’t know how they maneuvered into the current acquisition (feasting on Zuck’s fomo?), but saying “they always have great reputation in the AI industry” is laughable. This kind of garbage damages your reputation by loose association, you should be mad at them, not commenters.

Edit: Actually, the announcement doesn’t say anything about valuation, so it’s not even clear it’s a successful exit.

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