Manus

Manus is an autonomous, general purpose AI agent built by Butterfly Effect, the Singapore based company behind the Monica assistant, that launched in March 2025 and went viral within days for doing something chatbots do not: you give it an objective in plain language and it independently plans the steps, carries them out inside a cloud environment, and returns a finished result. It runs in a Linux style virtual computer where it can use real web browsers, terminals, and file systems, taking screenshots and using vision to verify that its actions completed, which lets it run a longer autonomous horizon than many operator style tools before getting stuck.

The product has matured quickly across versions. Manus 1.5 added full web application generation, producing prototypes with backend logic, a database, and authentication from a single prompt, and Manus 1.6 introduced a faster Chat Mode, a Wide Research feature that runs many sub agents in parallel across sources for deep research, tiered model access through 1.6 Lite, 1.6, and 1.6 Max, plus Scheduled Tasks and connector integrations. It is strongest at open ended, multi step web research and data gathering and at building first draft prototypes, slides, and spreadsheets, and weaker at production grade code and long branching workflows. Ownership drew global attention when Meta announced a roughly two billion dollar acquisition in December 2025, but Chinese regulators blocked the deal in April 2026 and Meta unwound it by June 2026, so Manus continues to operate as an independent standalone service from Singapore, backed by earlier rounds from ZhenFund, HSG, Tencent, and a Benchmark led Series B.

Manus fits researchers, solo builders, and teams that want a hands off agent to run open ended tasks end to end, and is a weaker fit for buyers who need production reliability, predictable cost, self hosting, or who have data governance concerns about a China founded provider operating inside authenticated sessions.