Author: CoolFish
Zuckerberg dropped a bombshell, with Meta officially announcing the completion of its acquisition of AI agent startup Manus.
The multi-billion dollar deal makes it the third-largest acquisition in Meta's history, after WhatsApp and Scale AI.
Even Instagram, which rewrote the social media landscape, might have to take a backseat to this acquisition.
Following the acquisition, Manus founder Xiao Hong will become Meta's Vice President. But what's most breathtaking isn't just the price, but also the speed.
According to LatePost, the entire acquisition negotiation took only a little over ten days. ZhenFund partner Liu Yuan remarked, "It was so fast that it made one wonder if it was even a fake offer." This "blitzkrieg" pace is extremely rare in the history of mergers and acquisitions among Silicon Valley giants. It's more like a determined "bride-snatching"—perhaps Zuckerberg knew better than anyone that Manus was a ticket he had to acquire on the path to the future through Agents. I. A "Different Dimension" in a Small Town in Jiangxi Province Xiao Hong was born in 1993 in a small town in Suichuan County, Ji'an City, Jiangxi Province. The town is known as the "Core of Red Culture, Capital of Tea, and Hometown of Hot Springs." For children in the town, the choice was either to study hard to succeed or to work to survive. But Xiao Hong wrote a third script for himself: he loved tinkering with computers. His family had an old desktop computer. While many children used computers for games and movies, Xiao Hong frequently went online, exploring and experimenting with various software. This became even more apparent in high school, when he became passionate about using software and writing reviews. In the "Otherworld Software World" community, we can still see a large amount of his content. Among them, the earliest article, written in 2010, titled "GeeXBox: A Free Audio-Visual System That Lets You DIY Your Own Portable Media Center PC," has over 100,000 views. "Phew, this is my (Xiao Hong's) first article on Otherworld. It's definitely not as good as Xiao X's, but I still hope everyone will like it." At the time, he was still a high school student. Writing software reviews and getting 100,000 views was a remarkable achievement, especially without a traffic pool or algorithmic recommendations. Through those words, we can perhaps clearly grasp the two core underlying abilities that led to his later success: first, the ability to break down hardcore and complex technologies into "plain language" that even laymen can understand; and second, his knowledge of what's cool and his ability to make others feel that "this thing is really cool." This "try something fun" geek logic has remained unchanged for 15 years, from the audio-visual system in 2010 to Bitcoin in 2013, and then to Manus in 2024. II. Huazhong University of Science and Technology's "Message in a Bottle"—You Don't Need to Invent Needs In 2011, Xiao Hong was admitted to the Software Engineering major at Huazhong University of Science and Technology with a score of 600 on the college entrance examination. "From now on, our educational background won't be as high as yours. From now on, you'll have to make all the decisions in your life yourself." These were the words Xiao Hong's parents left him. During his four years of university, Xiao Hong studied his favorite major while also embarking on his earliest entrepreneurial experience. According to an article on the WeChat public account "Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Huazhong University of Science and Technology," Xiao Hong was active in technology clubs during his time at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, joining the Qiming College "Joint Innovation Team" and serving as its vice-captain. In 2013, WeChat was just starting out. Xiao Hong and his team created a "WeChat Drift Bottle"—a campus version of Drift Bottle from Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Users could reply with "Drift Bottle" to "drop a bottle" with their message, which would then be randomly received by others; they could also "receive bottles," randomly receiving bottles from others and replying to them. It sounded simple, but in those days, this kind of gameplay was quite novel. Within three days of its launch, the number of replies on WeChat's backend reached 40,000, making it incredibly popular among students. Data from the backend showed that requests for boyfriends/girlfriends and venting were the main content in the Drift Bottles. A campus social product that captured the most genuine needs of university students. This campus entrepreneurial experience showcased Xiao Hong's keen insight into social needs and product experience, which was further validated in his later product designs. You don't need to invent needs; you just need to accurately meet them. III. Nightingale and Butterfly: Xiao Hong's Romance In 2015, the mobile internet was booming, and most Huazhong University of Science and Technology graduates could easily find jobs at large companies. Unlike his classmates, Xiao Hong decided to start his own business very early on. "I almost never heard of him submitting resumes or looking for jobs. He even rented an apartment with his partners, where they lived, ate, and worked. He focused more on technological innovation and wanted to put his ideas into practice," said Xiao He, a classmate of Xiao Hong. In 2015, Xiao Hong founded Wuhan Nightingale Technology Co., Ltd. in Optics Valley. Initially, Nightingale was just "singing" in a small house in Wuhan. The landlord even suspected that these young people were involved in a pyramid scheme. Xiao He pointed out that the name "Nightingale" comes from Oscar Wilde's "The Nightingale and the Rose." "You can tell from the company names: Nightingale Technology and Butterfly Effect. The former is taken from Wilde's story; he still has a romantic side." Romantic as it may be, reality never listens to Wilde's stories. In the "gold rush era" of the mobile internet, Xiao Hong's story began with a remarkably sober period of "self-doubt." At the time, the WeChat ecosystem was still largely undeveloped, yet Xiao Hong focused on the development and promotion of applications within it. His first successful product was called YiBan Assistant—an enhancement plugin developed for WeChat official account editors, which remains a favorite among them to this day. But for Xiao Hong, this business was too "stable," so stable that it became somewhat boring. If you set your sights on the stars and the sea, you won't stay in a comfortable harbor for too long. So, in 2018 and 2019, his team did some trial and error, developing several small products such as a family photo album mini-program, a live quiz mini-program, and a bookstore mini-program. Some of these products barely made a ripple, while others didn't even make a splash. On November 28, 2019, the WeChat Work team held a service provider recruitment salon in Wuhan, which led to the birth of WeCompanion Assistant. At the 2021 SaaS Conference, Li Zhifeng, Vice President of Tencent Enterprise WeChat, recalled: "Dozens of companies came that day, including a young man with a bag. Others might have just listened and moved on, but after he went back, he decided to go all in on Enterprise WeChat, developing based on its ecosystem, and wrote his first line of code that very day." This young man he mentioned was Xiao Hong, CEO of Weiban Assistant. At the time, Weiban's development was not smooth. Although version 1.0 had just been launched, it immediately encountered the pandemic. Worse still, the market was flooded with plug-in tools at the time, making the compliant and restrained Weiban seem like an awkward, obedient child in comparison. Perhaps it was thanks to Xiao Hong's persistence that a turning point arrived as scheduled on May 25, 2020. At that time, Tencent launched a large-scale crackdown on personal accounts using WeChat plug-ins, banning a large number of accounts; some users even had over 100 accounts banned, and hundreds of thousands of customer resources vanished instantly. At 3 a.m. the next day, Weiban Assistant published an article on its official WeChat account titled "Just Now, WeChat Massively Banned Accounts! Customer Resources Instantly Gone to Zero: After WeChat Auxiliary Tools Were Banned, Where Should Private Domain Operations Go?", which garnered over 100,000 views the following day. With plug-ins banned, companies began searching for alternative products, and Weiban Assistant naturally met these needs, enjoying the benefits brought by WeChat's ban on plug-ins. This experience is worth reflecting on. At the crossroads of short-term interests and long-term value, Xiao Hong always firmly chose the latter. This is not only courage, but also a kind of cognitive confidence. IV. From Monica to Manus, the Butterfly Begins to Take Flight At the end of 2022, ChatGPT was born. For ordinary people, it was a chat toy; but for Xiao Hong, it was a tombstone of the old era. He started Butterfly Effect. This time, his target wasn't WeChat, but rather the gateway to the internet—the browser. Among the wave of AI shell companies that sprang up like mushrooms after rain in 2023, Monica was like a quiet miracle—one of the few that survived and thrived. To date, Monica has accumulated millions of active users globally, and its ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) has quickly surpassed ten million US dollars. Logically, he should be popping champagne, but he isn't. Xiao Hong realized that while technological capabilities were constantly evolving, product forms often lagged behind. "When developing Monica, I discovered that 'context' was key, so I made the plugin automatically capture webpage information, saving users the trouble of copying and pasting. Later, Cursor became popular, proving that when model coding capabilities matured, chatbots were not the optimal product form; a carrier more aligned with the coding workflow was needed." "At the end of last year, we saw the emergence of 'Agents,' a new capability capable of complex planning and autonomous execution, and judged that it also lacked a good product form. This was our opportunity: to seize the window of model capability spillover." This is the reason for the birth of Manus. In Xiao Hong's view, the ultimate question is—what is the ultimate "shell" of AI? His answer is: a computer. In the digital world, computers are the terminals through which humans handle all affairs. Therefore, theoretically, equipping an AI with its own computer would allow it to perform all tasks like a human. According to Manus's official introduction, the name Manus comes from the Latin phrase "Mens et Manus" (mind and hand). However, Manus's hands were embroiled in controversy from the very beginning. Manus was released on March 5, 2025. Before that, it was already a top-tier product in the tech world—invitation codes were even being resold for tens of thousands of dollars on secondhand platforms, and were extremely difficult to obtain. However, the moment the product was unveiled, public opinion took a sharp turn for the worse, with a huge wave of skepticism quickly overwhelming the initial fervor. Many people believed that Manus lacked significant innovation; it was merely a product using a foreign model in a shell. "It didn't develop its own large model; it's a product developed based on existing large models in the industry." Some even wondered: why is it that such an exciting product is generating so little buzz in the tech world, with only independent media outlets reporting on it? It's noticeable that within a week of Manus's release, its reputation underwent a significant reversal. This wasn't just a domestic phenomenon; opinions were also highly polarized internationally. TechCrunch reported that Manus might not be China's next DeepSeek moment. However, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey stated shortly after Manus's release that the product was excellent. Faced with criticism, the Manus team doesn't shy away from admitting it's a "shell" product. This isn't inherently bad; the key is whether it solves user problems. Just like product innovation and underlying technological innovation. Apple doesn't manufacture chips or screens, yet the iPhone remains the most successful smartphone. Innovation lies in the system, interaction, and ecosystem, not the hardware itself. In April, Benchmark led a Series B funding round, valuing the company at $500 million post-investment; however, shortly after their investment, the U.S. Treasury initiated an investigation into Benchmark's investment in Manus. The review aims to check whether it violates the 2023 restrictions on Chinese AI investment. Some voices in Silicon Valley are beginning to question: "Is it compliant for a Chinese company to use Anthropic's model and receive American funding?" Xiao Hong finds himself in a position no one wants to be in. Regulation between China and the US in the AI field will tighten to a delicate tipping point in the first half of 2025. Manus is stuck in the middle: it uses Claude at the bottom layer, its investors are in Silicon Valley, its users are worldwide, and its company is registered in Beijing. Every link could become a reason for being blocked. He may only have two paths before him: First, shrink back to the domestic market and create a "Chinese version" of an AI agent. Safe, but the ceiling is predictable. The second option is to proactively sever ties and transform Manus into a truly "global company." Painful, but with the potential to go further. Xiao Hong chose the second option. No one knows the immense pressure Xiao Hong endured during that period. In 2015, he named the company "Nightingale"—the bird in Oscar Wilde's story that sings with its life and waters roses with its blood. Ten years later, he may have understood the full meaning of that name. To allow the rose of Manus to bloom globally, he had to sacrifice something. This wasn't running away; it was cutting off a limb to survive. But Manus didn't stop there. On May 12th, Manus ended its invitation code system, opening registration to all users and launching a subscription plan. Even before the opening, over a million users were already on the waiting list. June and July were perhaps the most controversial period for Manus. Manus's co-founder confirmed that it would move its headquarters to Singapore. Starting July 8th, Manus's Beijing-based company, Butterfly Effect, began layoffs. Approximately 80 employees in China were laid off, and content on social media platforms such as Weibo and Xiaohongshu was deleted. During this time, the label of "running away" was practically plastered all over Manus and Xiao Hong. In October 2025, Manus released version 1.5, reducing the average task completion time from 15 minutes in April to less than 4 minutes. In December, Manus announced that its annual recurring revenue (ARR) had surpassed $100 million. From commercialization to $100 million in ARR, it took less than nine months. Looking back at the initial message-in-a-bottle product, Xiao Hong had already realized that users didn't actually care whose model you used; they only cared about one thing: could it meet their needs, and could it help them get this done well? Manus's answer is: Yes. Fifth, surprisingly, Xiao Hong is also a Bitcoin holder. That's right, on Xiao Hong's "Jike" personal homepage, besides founder, INFP, and tool maker, he also has a simple identity: BTC Holder. This isn't a speculative label to follow the crowd. If you turn back the clock 12 years, you'll find that this keenness for new things was already ingrained in his genes. In November 2013, Xiao Hong, a freshman in college, wrote a long popular science article on "Otherworld Software World": "What is Bitcoin? How to Use It? Bitcoin Wallet Client Software Download". At that time, Bitcoin was not yet in the public eye; most people still regarded it as a "tulip bubble" or a "geek's toy." However, Xiao Hong had already posted his wallet address at the end of the article, writing, "Just buy a few dollars and put them in my wallet, look how cool this is." Out of curiosity, I checked that address. In February 2014, the holdings in that address were worth only $0.793; 12 years later, that asset is worth $1,969. A 2482-fold increase! The address at that time is probably no longer in use, and this amount of money is insignificant to the current VP of Meta, but what this number reflects is astonishing: he is someone who can find and hold onto the "future." This kind of composure in "holding positions" is vividly reflected in Manus's valuation curve. In early 2024, when Monica was just beginning to emerge, ByteDance offered $30 million to acquire it. For a 90s-born entrepreneur, this was enough to achieve financial freedom—a perfect opportunity to "secure his gains." But Xiao Hong refused. Just as he had weathered a long period of fluctuation in the value of Bitcoin, he recognized that Agents were the true ticket to AI general intelligence. He chose to continue holding his position, continuing down that path. Just a year and a half later, Meta knocked on his door with a multi-billion dollar offer. From $30 million to billions, it wasn't just a leap in valuation, but also the highest reward for long-termism. Xiao Hong also stated in his article that he enjoys trying new things and being adventurous. But in reality, his true strength lies in identifying genuinely vital signals amidst the noise. Whether he was the small-town youth holding $0.70 worth of Bitcoin 12 years ago, or the multi-billion dollar Meta VP standing beside Zuckerberg 12 years later, his core principle has never changed: Identify a future, and hold onto it like a belief. "This way you can directly experience Bitcoin! Just buy a few dollars and put them in your wallet~ 'I'm a Bitcoin owner now!' Look at that level of sophistication." In conclusion, from a small town in Ji'an, Jiangxi, to a humble house in Wuhan, and then to the spotlight of Silicon Valley, Xiao Hong's story may be telling us: True innovation doesn't necessarily mean reinventing the wheel from scratch; it can also involve recombinating existing elements to create products that truly solve problems. Looking back at Xiao Hong's 2022 article, "The Monologue of the CEO of Weiban," couldn't the past Weiban be the present Manus? Today's Weiban (Manus) is still far from achieving all of the above. To make it more than just a concept on paper, the company's members should work even harder. This process inevitably involves physical exhaustion, mental stress, and sometimes, even the injustice of being misunderstood. At such times, silently recite the mantra that has inspired countless people: "Per aspera ad astra, through this arduous journey, to reach the heavens."
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