Meta acquired Manus in a deal that aims to give the company a rare win in artificial intelligence after a year of revamping. Manus is critical to fleshing out Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's dream of a universal AI assistant to get work done across its products.
Whether Meta allows Manus to run or bogs it down remains to be seen, but there are some fun facts worth noting.
- Manus is on a $125 million annual revenue run rate after eight months.
- The company is growing 20% month-over-month since it releases Manus 1.5.
- Manus' portfolio of agents is focused on getting work done including making presentations, design and a laundry list of other things SMBs need to do. Manus has multiple connectors to various systems.
- The company released its General AI Agent earlier in 2025 and the goal is to enable users to delegate tasks.
- In many respects, Manus was able to move faster than the giants with AI agents that actually deliver results for various use cases.
- Manus plans range from $20 a month to $200 a month with Team plans available.
Yes, Manus flew under the radar relative to OpenAI and Anthropic, but can accelerate Meta's plans. What are Meta's AI plans other than handing out massive pay packages, spending big on capital expenditures and falling behind on LLMs? Here's what Zuckerberg said in October about the company's AI research spending and agentic AI.
"The research is going to enable new technological capabilities to exist. And then those capabilities can get built into all kinds of different products. So the ability to reason more intelligently is, for example, very important across a large number of things. It would be useful for an assistant. It will also be useful in business AI. It will also be useful in the AI agent that we're building to help advertisers figure out what their campaigns are going to be....
There are lots of different capabilities to build. I'm not sure that any one company is going to be the best at all of them. I doubt that's going to be the case. But a lot of what we're trying to do is not like -- not kind of do some things that others have done. We're really trying to build novel capabilities."
In July, Zuckerberg said:
"I believe every business will soon have a business AI, just like they have an e-mail address, social media account and website. Our focus is now deepening the experience and making Meta AI the leading personal AI. As we continue improving our models, we see engagement grow."
Manus should be able to get Meta closer to its AI agent vision. Meta said in a statement that it will "we will continue to operate and sell the Manus service, as well as integrate it into our products."
The paths forward for Manus could go like this:
- Meta will run Manus independently and it'll become a business AI brand that scales to a multi-billion revenue unit. Meta has built out its Instagram and WhatsApp businesses as part of a portfolio so there's some precedent.
- Manus agents will be built into a series of Meta products and absorbed. The technology remains, but Manus as a standalone business fades.
- Meta both operates Manus as a business and leverages it internally to maximize returns. Manus and Meta iterate on products and services.
Xiao Hong, CEO of Manus, said "joining Meta allows us to build on a stronger, more sustainable foundation without changing how Manus works or how decisions are made."
For now, Meta's Manus acquisition puts it back into the AI conversation as something more than a big spending also-ran.
Constellation Research's take
Holger Mueller, an analyst at Constellation Research, said the Manus deal is more of a hedge against its core advertising business. It's also an agentic AI play, but don't forget the ad angle.
Mueller said:
"In a world where it is not clear how AI is going to change how ads are going to be presented, consumed and paid for, Mark Zuckerberg is doubling down on AI and human supervision. The Manus agents pose interesting automation potential for knowledge workers, and an advertisement funded version of Manus, delivering AI automation first and then the ad at the moment of supervision. Brownie points for Meta if they are context and action aware."
