Meta plans to invest heavily in AI technology over the next three years, with the tech giant announcing the acquisition of Manus, a Singapore-based AI startup known for its unique autonomous general-purpose agents. Meta plans to integrate this into its social media and business products.
Meta's deal with Chinese-backed company Manas is valued at more than $2 billion, according to a report in wall street journalThis is in part due to the ability of AI agents to autonomously perform tasks such as building websites, planning trips, screening job applicants, coding, and analyzing market research.
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Manas leverages third-party AI models, such as Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet and various versions of Alibaba's Qwen, to perform various tasks.
Earlier this month, less than a year after its initial launch, the company issued a statement claiming it had already adopted millions of users and businesses and generated more than $100 million in subscription revenue.
“Joining Meta allows Manas to build a stronger and more sustainable foundation without changing the way we work or make decisions,” Manas CEO Xiao Hong said in an internal newsletter.
Meta integrates general-purpose agents across Manas' consumer and business products, including the Meta AI chatbot and social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp.
In an attempt to allay government-led concerns about Manus' Chinese ownership, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the startup would no longer have relationships with Chinese investors after the acquisition, with a spokesperson adding: “Manus AI will discontinue its services and operations in China.”
Over the past year, Meta has significantly increased its AI investment goals, particularly in promising AI companies.
For example, Meta recently invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI, a company that operates a global workforce of contractors that label images, text, and video for machine learning applications, to protect training data for its AI models.
The tech giant also expanded its partnership with semiconductor design company Arm in an effort to bring global efficiency to future AI systems and 3 billion app and technology users.
In November, Meta pledged to spend more than $600 billion in the U.S. alone by 2028 to compete with other big tech companies that are investing heavily in AI, including Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft.
