China Blocks META Stock's Acquisition of $2 Billion Manus AI

Meta Platforms NASDAQ: META took a real step forward with its artificial intelligence (AI) strategy in April. The company announced the release of its Muse Spark model, which helps tech stocks continue their strong performance.

This was for good reason, as important AI test platforms have shown that the Muse Spark is significantly smarter than previous Llama Meta models.

On the other hand, the Magnificent Seven company is also very involved when it comes to some direct AI.

Towards the end of 2025, Meta announced that it would acquire the first AI Manus. The deal makes a lot of sense, with Manus' capabilities complementing Meta's business offerings. However, a few months later, the Chinese government chose to block the transaction—blaming the agent's Meta AI strategy.

Manus Mission: Expanding Automated Meta Solutions

Manus, once a Chinese company, quickly built up a large user base for its AI solutions. This allowed the company to increase its annual recurring revenue to $100 million just eight months after launch. Manus said this is the fastest the company has achieved this. Manus' success and how its technology could improve Meta's products enticed the company to buy Manus for more than $2 billion.

The logic behind Manus' discovery is straightforward. Advertising drives almost all of Meta's revenue, the company provides a variety of tools to advertisers to support their goals. This includes Advantage+, which uses AI to automate and optimize advertising campaigns. The main goal of this is to help advertisers get more business in return for every dollar they spend on Meta. The better a company can do this, the more likely advertisers will spend money on Meta.

As Meta did in advertising campaigns, Manus helped perform other important tasks that businesses are involved in, such as market research, coding, and data analysis. By adding Manus's AI agents, Meta can provide comprehensive tools for customers, automated marketing and other functions. Since the company already has a large base of advertising customers, it makes sense to think that Meta could sell them additional automation products.

However, it appears that the Chinese government has pretty much dismissed all hope of Manus becoming part of the Meta.

China Closes Deal—Manus Moves to Comply

The Chinese government blocked the Manus transaction, ordering Meta and Manus to cancel the deal. Although Manus has moved its headquarters to Singapore, China says that because the company started in China, it still has the power to approve the sale of the company. The decision shows that China will go out of its way to ensure that domestic AIs fall into the hands of American companies. In a strict legal sense, it is not clear that Manus and Meta should obey this order. Additionally, many investors in Manus had already received payment before China blocked the deal, making it difficult to reverse it.

However, Manus is taking steps in that direction. Manus' founders are aiming to raise $1 billion to buy back their shares in the company from Meta, according to reports. Meta itself did not comment on the denial of the deal.

Even if China has no legal authority over Manus, it is possible that there are forms of indirect power that it can use to make Meta and Manus comply. For example, even though China bans Meta apps, Chinese advertisers can still buy Meta ads from other countries. Therefore, Meta's core business still generates a lot of revenue from Chinese customers, making thwarting the government's order a risky proposition.

It seems best to assume that Manus will not be part of the Meta going forward. Still, Meta hasn't said the deal is over yet, suggesting there may be some hope left when considering the complexities of pulling it off.

The Meta's Agetic AI Journey Will Likely Develop Without Manus

Overall, the Manus deal failed to put Meta back on the AI ​​product rollout roadmap. This is very important, as Manus was one of the key examples of how Meta followed agent AI. However, Meta has discussed agent AI in many other contexts, including business messaging agents and personal agents. This means that Meta could not rely on Manus to provide agent solutions, although Manus could help speed up the deployment of its agent solutions.

Additionally, at some level, Advantage+ likely already uses some form of agent AI, or at least works closer to an agent than a chatbot. Automating multi-step tasks—as Advantage+ does in setting up, running, and optimizing advertising campaigns—is one of the key things that separates agents from chatbots. Thus, there is reason to believe that Meta can successfully develop other agent-like abilities other than Manus.

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