This amount of over $500 million is the largest single investment to date in China's AI application sector.Article author and source: Pencil Road
On October 8, Manus's parent company, Butterfly Effect, announced the completion of a new funding round exceeding $500 million (approximately RMB 3.35 billion). Boyu Capital and IDG Capital led the round, with continued participation from Tencent, Sequoia China, and ZhenFund.
This amount of over $500 million is the largest single investment to date in China's AI application sector.
The target valuation for this funding round is approximately $4 billion, doubling the valuation at the time of Meta's acquisition. However, Manus did not disclose the final valuation in its funding announcement.
Manus's return coincides with the surge of personal AI agents in Silicon Valley.
On September 8, Meta launched its personal agent, Muse, which surpassed 5 million downloads within less than a month. On September 28, the startup Instinct, with only around ten employees, secured $1 billion in funding, reaching a $10 billion valuation.
Why are investors suddenly willing to pay such a high price for an AI assistant that books flights, cancels memberships, and handles emails?
Manus's new round of funding may provide the answer.
Manus's net worth has doubled.
Manus has undergone a rare capital storyline over the past year.
In March 2025, Butterfly Effect launched Manus. In December of the same year, Meta announced its acquisition of Manus for over $2 billion. In April 2026, regulators required the transaction to be unwound. The original investors ultimately repurchased the shares from Meta, and Manus announced the resumption of independent operations on September 1.
Interestingly, despite losing Meta as a buyer, Manus's business metrics are improving.
According to a June report by The Information, Manus had an annualized revenue run rate of approximately $100 million when it was acquired in December 2025; by June 2026, this figure had risen to between $400 million and $500 million.
In just six months, it has grown approximately fourfold.
Investors aren't just buying into the future story of AI agents—they're also investing in a subscription business that already generates substantial revenue.
On September 28, Manus made another major product update.
The new version, Manus 2.0, introduces the Cascade agent framework, cloud computers, and automated workflows. The official statement claims that, in a set of test configurations, the new system reduced operational costs by 32% and shortened task completion time by 28.2%.
Meanwhile, Manus is rebuilding its China team, advancing collaborations with domestic large model manufacturers, and hiring in Beijing.
Independent, funded, expanding, and reducing costs, the company’s focus has shifted from demonstrating technological capability to scaling its business.
A 14-person company worth $10 billion
Manus is not the only agent company attracting capital investment.
Over the past month, one of the most popular consumer AI products in Silicon Valley has been Muse, launched by Meta.
It looks like a cute digital pet, but it performs the duties of a personal assistant.
Users can have it reply to emails, book hotels, compare product prices, and even negotiate with merchants. Unlike ordinary chatbots, Muse can open browsers, fill out forms, process transactions, and continue executing tasks even after the user closes the app.
Users don’t need to learn complex prompts or set up their own automated systems.
According to The Information on September 30, Muse has over 3 million weekly active users who send commands, and more than 1 million daily active users who send commands.
Meta has also launched monthly paid plans priced at $20 and $100. Although subscription revenue is still in its early stages, Wall Street has begun reassessing its business value.
Since the launch of Muse, Meta's market capitalization increased by approximately $450 billion in one month. Although stock price movements are influenced by other factors, capital markets are clearly beginning to take seriously the impact of personal agents on internet business models.
Compared to Meta, Instinct’s story has a more Silicon Valley vibe.
Its founder, Noah Shinn, is only 23 years old and previously attended Northeastern University in the United States before dropping out to start his own business. During his time at university, he participated in AI agent research and worked at the enterprise AI company Sierra.
In 2025, he founded Instinct.
This product communicates with users via text message and phone calls. Some people use it to cancel forgotten subscription services, others to arrange cross-state travel, and some to plan their weddings.
Even more astonishing is the speed of fundraising.
On August 26, Instinct announced the completion of a $250 million Series B funding round, reaching a $2.5 billion valuation.
Just one month later, on September 28, it secured a $1 billion funding round from Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, and Coatue, raising its valuation to $10 billion.
In one month, the valuation quadrupled.
According to TechCrunch, Instinct’s team at the time consisted of only 14 people. At a $10 billion valuation, this equates to approximately $710 million in valuation per employee.
Instinct is still in its early invite-only phase and has not been widely opened for use.
Why is capital so aggressive? Because investors believe that personal agents have the potential to become the primary gateway for the next generation of the internet.
In the past, users would open Ctrip to book a flight, visit Taobao or Amazon to purchase goods, and open a review or reservation platform to book a restaurant.
But if AI can understand user needs and directly perform searches, comparisons, orders, and payments, consumers won't need to open each app individually.
Whoever controls the agent near the user has the opportunity to reallocate internet transaction traffic.
This is precisely the market that Manus, Muse, and Instinct are competing for.
AI wants to profit from every transaction.
The truly imaginative aspect of personal agents may not be charging users $20 per month, but rather spending money on their behalf.
On September 29, Instinct founder Shinn revealed on a podcast that the platform's annual trading volume is approaching $1 billion, with over half coming from travel bookings.
Instinct aims to allow individual users to use the service for free, with merchants providing goods and services paying the transaction fees (similar to thanking customers for choosing my service).
For investors, this means two entirely different growth potentials.
The first is a software subscription, with revenue dependent on the number of paying users and the monthly fee. The second is a transaction commission, with revenue dependent on how many transactions the Agent can complete on behalf of users.
The latter has the opportunity to enter larger markets such as travel, retail, dining, insurance, and finance.
In October, Leif Abraham, co-CEO of the investment platform Public, told Business Insider that he had begun purchasing skincare products, clothing, and other items through Muse instead of always relying on Amazon.
Some orders are directed straight to brand merchants using Shopify.
Amazon has begun restricting Muse's access to its website, while Shopify has chosen to partner with an AI agent.
This divergence is very representative.
For platforms that control user access, agents may represent a loss of traffic control; however, for merchants lacking traffic advantages, agents can create a new channel to bypass large platforms and connect directly with consumers.
Manus is also expanding in this direction.
On September 28, it launched its standalone personal agent product, Cue.
Cue shares the same underlying infrastructure as Manus but places greater emphasis on personal life tasks. Users can create multiple Agents, each with its own email address, phone number, wallet, and computer.
They can make phone calls, send messages, make payments within user-set budgets, and even form teams to collaborate.
For example, when organizing an event, one agent finds a venue, another compares quotes, and a third handles material production.
This means Manus is moving from helping users complete work tasks into personal affairs and the trading market.
However, agents face two practical obstacles to earning money.
The first is whether the platform is willing to approve it.
On October 6, TechCrunch reported that Amazon has blocked Muse from accessing its retail website. An agent's ability to reliably complete tasks depends not only on model capabilities but also on whether the website permits access, invocation, and transactions.
This also creates new business opportunities: helping agents securely and legally connect to merchant systems by providing authentication, payment authorization, and transaction interfaces.
The second barrier is trust.
On October 5, Business Insider reported that Instinct proactively pushed product recommendations to certain users.
Investor Shruti Gandhi received an unsolicited shopping list that included a $250.75 carry-on suitcase, sunscreen, a power bank, and other items.
Instinct clearly remembered her private information about an upcoming meeting and the need to travel.
The question is: does the user need an assistant who understands them, or a salesperson who has access to their private information and is always trying to convince them to spend?
The report provides no evidence that these recommendations constitute paid advertisements, nor can it confirm that Instinct received commissions from the related purchases. However, it raises the most difficult question surrounding the commercialization of individual agents: when an assistant earns money through transaction commissions, can it still fully act in the user’s best interest?
Manus also cannot avoid this challenge.
Future personal agents will require user authorization to manage email, calendars, accounts, and payment tools. They must not only understand the user but also prove they will not abuse their permissions.
This also means that the next wave of entrepreneurial opportunities may not only belong to consumer-facing products like Manus and Muse, but also to companies that provide agents with payment, authentication, privacy protection, and vertical industry transaction capabilities.
Back to Manus's funding.
Over the past year, the AI industry has been debating whether the next super app will still be a chat box.
Now, capital is offering another answer: consumers may not need a more talkative AI; they’d rather have an assistant that gets things done.
Manus has demonstrated that people are willing to pay for such assistants. Instinct is now experimenting with having merchants pay for orders generated by agents.
But what truly determines the outcome of this competition is not who can get AI to book one more flight, but who can make users feel confident enough to hand over their credit cards.
This may be harder than raising $10 billion.