Manus raises over $500M at ~$4B valuation, double its Meta-era price
Butterfly Effect, parent of Manus, said it closed a new round of more than $500 million led by Boyu Capital and IDG Capital, with existing backers Tencent, HongShan and ZhenFund participating, at a valuation of about $4 billion — twice the $2 billion Meta had offered and the largest single round for a China-born agent startup. The funding follows Manus 2.0 on Sept. 28, which swapped its underlying agent execution framework for in-house Cascade, added a 24/7 cloud computer and event-triggered workflows, upgraded the desktop app into Manus Studio for video and game work, and launched Cue, which gives each agent its own email, phone number, wallet and computer. The report says ARR rose from $100 million in December 2025 to a $400–500 million range by end-June 2026, though that surge coincided with the seven months Manus operated inside Meta.
Manus's post-independence growth is a key test of whether a general-purpose agent startup can sustain a business outside big-tech distribution.