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Chinese officials are reviewing Meta’s US$2 billion acquisition of artificial intelligence startup Manus for possible technology control violations, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday (Jan 6), citing two people familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n
Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Meta and Manus \u200cdid not immediately respond to requests \u200cfor comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Chinese commerce ministry officials began assessing whether the relocation of Manus’ staff and technology to Singapore and the consequent sale to Meta required an export licence under Chinese law, the report said.<\/p>\n
While the review is \u200din its preliminary stages and may not lead to a formal investigation, the need for a licence could provide Beijing with an avenue to influence the transaction, including, \u200bin an extreme \u200ccase, trying to force the parties to abandon the deal, the report added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meta acquired Manus last \u200bmonth, when a source familiar with the matter told Reuters \u2060that the deal values \u200cthe Singapore-based firm at between US$2 billion and US$3 billion.<\/p>\n
Manus \u200bwent viral early this year on X after it released what it claimed was the world’s \u200dfirst general AI agent, capable of making decisions and \u2060executing tasks autonomously, with much less prompting required than AI \u200bchatbots such as \u200cChatGPT and DeepSeek.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n