https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/meta-buys-ai-startup-manus-addin...
2 billion is the price.
ManusAI Joins Meta
201–210 of 221 posts
Re: ManusAI Joins Meta
#202Earlier 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…
You've stumbled upon the same trade Matt Levine has been pointing out for a few months now. If you're good at AI, you could get hired at a top-tier company for 1-2M annual comp, and expect to stay there for at most five (5) years. That's a maximum of 10M pre-tax, and you'd be still on the receiving end of employment gauntlet. Alternatively you could spin up an AI startup, and get acquired for 75M+ in less than 2 year…
good at AI / product / marketing / boring tech infra
all of which are non-overlapping circles
Re: ManusAI Joins Meta
#203From 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.
There's a saying "follow the money". In this case you just need to follow the people involved in this company and the ones who negotiated this deal from Meta side and you will get the answer why it was acquired and why its valued so high. Financial engineering and social networking at its best.
The data labeler has been instructed to build products, so he splurges on a company, which, unlike 95% of AI startups, at least has a functioning website.
He is also hiring in Singapore:
https://www.ft.com/content/1bf28a2f-4778-4a83-8276-eaa19d888...
I have never heard of manus.ai before. I hope he checked if the revenue is circular. It does feel like friend/FOMO acquisitions in 1999.
Re: ManusAI Joins Meta
#204I’m wondering why these companies are so hyped and valued at these astronomical levels. Honestly, nothing really impresses me enough to think, “Wow, this company actually deserves that kind of valuation”. These valuations are to the point point that this looks too close to money laundering, just like buying art.
Because we are at a historic moment where governments are propping up fiat money using whatever they could.
All these crazy valuations is just a manifestation.
Re: ManusAI Joins Meta
#205My guess is they had to sell to keep the lights on (similar to Windsurf). They’re reportedly at ~$100M ARR, implying about $8.3–8.5M in monthly revenue (ARR = last month * 12). At the same time, they claim to have processed 147T+ tokens. For context, pricing that volume on something like Sonnet 4.5 would come out to roughly $500M in API costs. They likely offset a chunk of that with open models, but for higher-qualit…
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Re: ManusAI Joins Meta
#206I remember this company from the very beginning. I was very confused by them, but just the other day they sent an email saying they had hit $100MM ARR and $125MM run rate. Who is paying? No clue, must be big in China. I skipped going to their hackathon :')
Had an identical reaction to that $100m email. I decided to try it again with the browser extension. My verdict is it is better than ChatGPT Atlas for the agent mode, so I see use cases for it. But I am still surprised it's at $100mm ARR. I had thought the company had died after their initial hyped launch and didn't see anyone talking about or using the company at all since then...and we play around with a lot of AI…
I think FUD is working on Meta coming from their archrival Bytedance.
Bytedance recently launched a similar product in China and caused quite a stir, local phone brands are jostling for partnerships, the AI agent phone.
Meta probably don't want to miss the next thing, even if it turned out to be a dud.
Re: ManusAI Joins Meta
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
You've stumbled upon the same trade Matt Levine has been pointing out for a few months now. If you're good at AI, you could get hired at a top-tier company for 1-2M annual comp, and expect to stay there for at most five (5) years. That's a maximum of 10M pre-tax, and you'd be still on the receiving end of employment gauntlet. Alternatively you could spin up an AI startup, and get acquired for 75M+ in less than 2 year…
What’s your definition of “good at AI” sufficient to get 1m+ at a company already bursting with AI people?
Based on the snippets I've gathered from Money Stuff, essentially bleeding-edge researchers with an already established track record and a PhD.
Couple of items I could easily find from my own archive:
- https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2025-09-29/the-perfect-ai-startup
- https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2025-06-26/anyone-can-sell-you-spacex-stock
- https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2025-09-15/elon-musk-bought-some-stockRe: ManusAI Joins Meta
#208Earlier 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…
You've stumbled upon the same trade Matt Levine has been pointing out for a few months now. If you're good at AI, you could get hired at a top-tier company for 1-2M annual comp, and expect to stay there for at most five (5) years. That's a maximum of 10M pre-tax, and you'd be still on the receiving end of employment gauntlet. Alternatively you could spin up an AI startup, and get acquired for 75M+ in less than 2 year…
Interesting. That sounds like the trade for a very credentialed AI person. For random hackers, it's a little different...
There's the job ($250K+ in a VHCOLA, and probably worthless stock options), or their own startup.
I'd distinguish the kitchen table bootstrap startup, from the courting funding and playing the VC game startup.
The bootstrapped startup lets you do whatever product or tech demo you can do, and only that, and then eventually you have to deal with M&A courtship.
The VC track startup, you have to focus on jumping through the hoops of all sorts modern VC investors throughout the process. And among their criteria will be things like what your socioeconomic class is, and which school did you go to, bro. But it's otherwise easy, because you just have to go through the motions and burn VC money and hit their milestones while the hype wave musical chairs music is playing, and worst case is that you're a serial entrepreneur.
Either kind of startup is valid, but bootstrapped could have you spending most of your time on actual AI product work, if you can scope it to be viable with your resources. But you have to work smart and energetically, and worst case is that you run out of personal and revenue money, and then have to do a bunch of job interviewing to beg for a job from the previous category of founder.
This reminds me of when YC seemed to be a response to the dotcom boom environment, a bit "by hackers, for hackers", to help hackers start Internet businesses. Rather than mostly only the non-hackers starting dotcoms (such as with affluent family angel investors and connections). Or rather than hackers having to spend their energy jumping through a lot of hoops, while dealing with disingenuous and exploitative finance bro types.
Re: ManusAI Joins Meta
#209This was one of the worst apps I've ever used around their launch. Logging in recently it looks like a generic chat now? I'm not sure what their product is.
Re: ManusAI Joins Meta
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
Consider the possibility that the people who make these decisions aren't actually all that smart and are easily manipulated by marketing and the sycophants/impostors they surround themselves with.
You're telling me the folks who brought us the metaverse that revolutionized our lives are making dumb investments? That's a bold claim.
Who are you in this scenario though? Are you ManusAI getting bought for a giant pile of money? Are you a vendor that supplies Meta for their VR hardware that's getting paid in money? Are you an employee at Meta getting paid in money and Meta shares to build the Metaverse? Are you a shareholder of Meta who's stock is up? Like, sure, we can sit back and laugh at no legs, but Meta spent money they had on a thing they wanted to do. Sure, it didn't pan out, like that time I tried to pick up scuba diving, but when you have that much money, you can afford to try things that don't work. What's better, to try and fail, or never try because someone might make fun of you? If I just sold a company for half a billion, you could call me all the names you want, I wouldn't be able to hear you over the engines of my private fighter jet.