Tencent Leads $2 Billion Manus Buyback From Meta, Becomes Top Holder

Tencent Holdings, HongShan and ZhenFund are buying back AI-agent startup Manus from Meta Platforms for about $2 billion, returning the company to independent operation with Tencent as its largest shareholder.

Tencent acquired the stake previously held by U.S. venture firm Benchmark, which had been Manus's largest shareholder before the Meta deal but did not join the buyback, a person close to Manus said.

The transaction price is broadly similar to the $2 billion Meta paid in December 2025, when it acquired the startup in its third-largest deal ever. Manus said it will resume operations as an independent company, with some users required to back up data by Aug. 23 as part of the transition and to comply with regulatory requirements in certain jurisdictions.

The buyback follows an April 27 order by China's foreign investment security review office to unwind the acquisition, the first publicly blocked foreign deal in the AI sector since the review rules took effect in 2021. Manus will continue operating independently in Singapore, setting up a path toward a Hong Kong listing.

The deal hands Tencent the largest single stake in a startup whose annualized revenue more than quadrupled during its seven months inside Meta. Manus's daily revenue rose to nearly $1.5 million from $300,000, and its annualized recurring revenue climbed to more than $400 million from $100 million at acquisition, at one point surpassing DeepSeek, according to data compiled by Sacra and PPC Land.

A Seven-Month Detour Through Meta's Ad Empire

Meta moved quickly after closing the deal, integrating Manus into its AdsManager within two months and pushing its capabilities to WhatsApp Business and Instagram. More than 10 million advertisers could use natural language to run competitor analysis and automated reporting. The team grew to 150 people from 105, and Manus's product architecture became tied to Meta's engineering rhythm.

The reversal forced Meta to unwind those ties. Manus employees lost access to Meta's internal systems in early June, and Meta launched Ads AI Connectors and Meta Business Agent as replacements within weeks. Data generated by affected users from Dec. 29, 2025 onward will be physically deleted during a 48-hour window starting Aug. 23.

Tencent's Two Scenarios

Tencent weighed two outcomes when structuring the buyback, according to people familiar with the matter: an optimistic case where Manus's endogenous revenue holds at $200 million, and a pessimistic one where it falls below $100 million once Meta's advertising pipeline is removed. The gap is decisive for a company valued at $2 billion.

Manus does not build its own foundation models, running instead on Anthropic's Claude, which leaves it exposed to price increases and potential competition from its model supplier. The startup's most valuable asset may be the experience its 150-person team gained running agents across Meta's advertising infrastructure — experience that maps directly onto Tencent's WeChat, which holds the largest advertising inventory in China.

The deal resets the competitive balance in China's AI-agent market, where OpenAI's Operator, Anthropic's Claude Cowork and Google's Mariner now compete with domestic rivals including Zhipu's AutoGLM and Alibaba's Qwen. For Tencent, the $2 billion stake buys a team trained on the world's largest advertising system — and a hedge against the model wars it has chosen not to fight directly.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.