Why Manus has become a crucial prize in the global AI race

China blocked Meta on Monday from acquiring the agentic platform Manus, a move that underscores both Manus’s strategic value and the increasingly fraught geopolitics of AI. The company behind Manus, Butterfly Effect, moved part of its operations, including its registered headquarters, from Beijing to Singapore after raising funding, including $75 million from the American VC firm Benchmark Capital in 2025. China contends that the “core DNA” of Manus was developed domestically. That claim u...