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Okay, so the U.S. and China are locked in an all-out race to build the most powerful AI on the planet. Beijing is throwing billions at homegrown models, tightening its grip on the tech sector, and watching nervously as its best AI talent gravitates to U.S. companies<\/a>. Yet Manus \u2014 one of China\u2019s most buzzed-about AI startups \u2014 quietly relocated to Singapore and sold itself to Meta for $2 billion. <\/p>\n Did anyone think there would not<\/em> be a reckoning over this tie-up?<\/p>\n As industry watchers know, Manus burst onto the scene in the spring of last year with a demo video showing an AI agent screening job candidates, planning vacations, and analyzing stock portfolios, and it cheekily claimed it outperformed OpenAI\u2019s Deep Research. Within weeks, Benchmark \u2014 the consummate Silicon Valley venture firm \u2014 led a $75 million funding round at a $500 million valuation. That was surprising. (Senator John Cornyn had thoughts, tweeting<\/a> at the time, \u201cWho thinks it is a good idea for American investors to subsidize our biggest adversary in AI, only to have the CCP use that technology to challenge us economically and militarily? Not me.\u201d)<\/p>\n By December, Manus had millions of users and was pulling in over $100 million in annual recurring revenue. Then Meta came calling, and Mark Zuckerberg, who has staked the company\u2019s future on AI, snapped it up for $2 billion. That, too, was surprising.<\/p>\n It\u2019s worth noting that Manus didn\u2019t just sell itself to an American buyer; it spent the better part of last year actively trying to operate outside China\u2019s orbit. The company relocated its headquarters and core team from Beijing to Singapore, restructured its ownership, and after the Meta deal was announced, Meta pledged to cut all ties<\/a> with Manus\u2019s Chinese investors and shut down its operations in China entirely. By every measure, Manus was trying to make itself a Singapore company.<\/p>\n But if that string of events raised eyebrows in Washington, you can only imagine that in Beijing, they were apoplectic.<\/p>\n China has a phrase for all of this: \u201cselling young crops<\/a>\u201d \u2014 homegrown AI companies that move abroad and sell themselves to foreign buyers before they\u2019ve fully matured, taking their intellectual property and talent with them. <\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco, CA<\/span> Beijing also hates it and has spent years establishing that no company operates outside its reach. Surely, we all remember that time Jack Ma gave a speech in 2020, mildly criticizing Chinese regulators, after which he disappeared from public life for months, Ant Group\u2019s blockbuster IPO was killed overnight, and Alibaba was handed a $2.8 billion fine. China then spent the next two years methodically dismantling its own booming tech sector, wiping out hundreds of billions in market value. Chinese leaders are many things, but subtle is not one of them.<\/p>\n Which is why it wasn\u2019t entirely surprising when, on Tuesday, the Financial Times reported that Manus co-founders Xiao Hong and Ji Yichao were summoned to a meeting this month with China\u2019s National Development and Reform Commission and told that they wouldn\u2019t be leaving the country<\/a> for a while. <\/p>\n No formal charges have been filed \u2014 just an inquiry into whether the Meta deal violated Beijing\u2019s foreign investment rules.<\/p>\n Beijing is calling it a routine regulatory review.<\/p>\n At some point, someone at Manus probably thought they\u2019d gotten away with it, and maybe they still will. But given the stakes of the AI race, that was always a big gamble. Now Beijing wants answers; Manus\u2019s founders are apparently not going anywhere until it gets them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n