Last December, Meta announced it acquired Manus, a developer of general purpose AI agents that was founded in China<\/a> in 2022 before relocating to Singapore. The deal quickly attracted scrutiny from Beijing and Washington, with Chinese officials investigating whether it violated the country’s rules on foreign investment. <\/p>\n The country’s National Development and Reform Commission<\/a> issued its decision in April, instructing the parties to withdraw the transaction. That kickstarted a complicated unwinding process<\/a>. Beijing has since tightened tech export controls on cross-border deals, as the U.S. and China compete for talent, hardware and data amid an intensifying AI race.<\/p>\n Manus said Tuesday that some users will need to back up their data generated on or after December 29, 2025, the date the Meta deal was announced.<\/p>\n “This is part of our separation from Meta; we must take this step to comply with regulatory requirements in specific parts of the world,” the company wrote.<\/p>\n Meta had planned to implement Manus’ technology in its consumer and enterprise products. The deal came amid a string of aggressive AI expansion<\/a> by Meta, which has been working to build a subscription business around the technology and compete with Google<\/a> and top AI labs Anthropic<\/a> and OpenAI<\/a>. <\/p>\n Last week, Meta released<\/a> its first coding agent, marking its latest attempt to generate revenue from AI. <\/p>\n –CNBC’s Anniek Bao<\/a> contributed reporting to this story.<\/p>\n
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