{"id":356942,"date":"2026-03-25T08:32:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T08:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/356942\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T08:32:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T08:32:12","slug":"china-bars-manus-co-founders-from-leaving-country-amid-meta-deal-review-ft-reports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/356942\/","title":{"rendered":"China bars Manus co-founders from leaving country amid Meta deal review, FT reports"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">March 25 (Reuters) &#8211; China has barred two co-founders of <a href=\"https:\/\/tech.yahoo.com\/ai\/\" data-ylk=\"slk:artificial intelligence;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;artificial intelligence&quot;}\" class=\"link \" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">artificial intelligence<\/a> startup Manus from leaving the country as \u200cregulators review whether Meta&#8217;s $2 billion acquisition of the \u200cfirm violated investment rules, the Financial Times reported.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">Manus&#8217;s chief executive Xiao Hong and \u200bchief scientist Ji Yichao were summoned to a meeting in Beijing with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) this month, the FT said on Wednesday, citing people with knowledge of the \u200cmatter.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">Following the meeting, the \u2060executives were told they could not leave China due to a regulatory review, though they are \u2060free to travel within the country, the report said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">Manus is actively seeking legal and consulting assistance to help resolve the \u200bmatter, the \u200bnewspaper said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">&#8220;The transaction complied fully \u200bwith applicable law. We anticipate \u200can appropriate resolution to the inquiry,&#8221; a Meta spokesperson told Reuters in an emailed statement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">China&#8217;s Ministry of Public Security and Manus did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">Meta announced in December that it would acquire Manus, which develops general-purpose \u200cAI agents capable of operating as \u200bdigital employees, performing tasks such as \u200bresearch and automation with \u200bminimal prompting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">Financial terms of the deal were not \u200cdisclosed, but a source told \u200bReuters at the \u200btime that the deal valued Manus at $2 billion-$3 billion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">Earlier this year, China&#8217;s commerce ministry had said it would \u200bassess and investigate \u200cMeta&#8217;s acquisition of Manus.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">(Reporting by Gursimran Kaur in Bengaluru; \u200badditional reporting by Preetika Parashuraman, Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala, \u200bJanane Venkatraman and Sumana Nandy)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"March 25 (Reuters) &#8211; China has barred two co-founders of artificial intelligence startup Manus from leaving the country&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,1657,85,46,172994,120548,1430,12794,125,172995],"class_list":["post-356942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-china","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-leaving-the-country","tag-manus","tag-meta","tag-national-development-and-reform-commission","tag-technology","tag-xiao-hong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}