The evidence is pretty clear, and it keeps growing. Social media causes real harm, both to individuals and to society. It is addictive by design, it worsens mental health especially for kids, and it rewards outrage and misinformation. In that way, social media looks a lot like smoking. It was widely adopted before we understood the risks, then aggressively pushed because it was profitable.
Meta did more than just take part in this system. It perfected it, scaled it worldwide, and resisted meaningful change until public pressure or regulation forced its hand.
That is why it is worrying to see Meta present itself as a trusted builder of the next major technology wave. When a company repeatedly puts growth ahead of social harm, skepticism is not bias. It is common sense. Giving that company even more powerful and less transparent tools should cause us alarm.
From their Wikipedia, because I had no idea who they were:
"Following Manus's launch in March 2025, Butterfly Effect raised $75 million in a funding round led by Benchmark at a valuation of approximately $500 million in April 2025."
Half a billion a month after launch and acquisition before the end of the same year. Wild times.
Manus was pretty damn good at delivering impressive results well before other providers. I stopped using it because I was concerned about data privacy and and whatever extent one particular foreign country might (or might not) have hooks into Manus. Now that Meta has purchased them I know I'm safe ((sarcasm)).
I have many questions:
- Will Meta fuck this up as they seem (in my opinion) to do with most of the acquisitions? Oculus? Drop.io?
- Did they grossly overpay?
- Will innovation slow to a crawl (eg. Instagram, Whatsapp)?
- Will Manus' top talent bail?
- How is it conceivable Meta couldn't build this themselves. It can't possibly have been Manus' user base they were after, can it?
- How much trouble am I in for telling my wife to sell her Meta stock two weeks ago?
Meta was lacking behind on the agents space. This is a good capture but they are making crazy good offers but not turning them into killer products so far. The AI agents space is picking up in 20206. Next they will hire voice agents like ElevenLabs and Cartesia, visual Agents like VLM Run or Landing AI and then web browsing agents.
Totally forgot Manus existed. It’s funny they’re so eager to tell us this acquisition means they are a pioneer. Imagine pioneering agentic LLM usage - surely you’d be buying Meta!
Meta needed consumer product along with foundational model. Manus gives them consumer product now. Pure speculation - must be 5B+ acquisition given their revenue run rate.
I had tried manus and never could find a use-case for them that worked for me
1. Insanely overpriced versus over deep research products
2. Deep research has increasingly become a feature in most other products
3. They shot themselves in the foot by sharing very limited usage credits, in the initial wave of DR products pretty much everything was free - ChatGPT, Claude, Pplx, Deepseek. they rolled this back later and added a free credit tier but by then the hype had moved off.
TBF
1. Their post synthesis, formatting abilities were better than others
2. Their initial launch was "hypey" - lots of waitlist based access.
But I had seen somewhere they mention they had hit $100mn in revenue - M&A also signals that DR is increasingly a feature of the labs. And labs missing an assistant will probably buy a well distributed one
I’m wondering why these companies are so hyped and valued at these astronomical levels. Honestly, nothing really impresses me enough to think, “Wow, this company actually deserves that kind of valuation”.
These valuations are to the point point that this looks too close to money laundering, just like buying art.
It says:
"Our top priority is ensuring that this change won't be disruptive for our customers. We will continue to sell and operate our product subscription service through our app and website. The company will continue to operate from Singapore."
But I suppose they won't try as hard as before to make the product better. It's such a shame. I've been using it since it launched the video by begging everyone I knew and got an invite code. And I've been on the higher end of subscription ever since.
This acquisition is a complete joke in China. From the very beginning, the company focused almost entirely on marketing. Then, after a few months, it fled China and relocated to Singapore. Now that it’s been acquired by Meta, you could say it has finally fulfilled its mission.
I'd like someone to do a comparison of tech company valuations pre GenAI vs post for the same vertical.
I understand there's always some optimism for new tech, but the valuations we're seeing seems absurd to me.
Like, do they expect to see x100 profit for the same vertical? Obviously some new markets have been created, but I don't see them solving any particularly novel business problems.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 61.4 ms ] threadIs it, now?
Anyone else thought this was satire when they read that as the second line in the announcement?
I literally laughed, then clicked the top left logo, to check out the homepage and see if this `ManuAI` was a real website.
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You would think that they would know better to at least edit that out.
It's not just ironic -- it's cosmically poetic.
Meta did more than just take part in this system. It perfected it, scaled it worldwide, and resisted meaningful change until public pressure or regulation forced its hand.
That is why it is worrying to see Meta present itself as a trusted builder of the next major technology wave. When a company repeatedly puts growth ahead of social harm, skepticism is not bias. It is common sense. Giving that company even more powerful and less transparent tools should cause us alarm.
"Following Manus's launch in March 2025, Butterfly Effect raised $75 million in a funding round led by Benchmark at a valuation of approximately $500 million in April 2025."
Half a billion a month after launch and acquisition before the end of the same year. Wild times.
I have many questions:
- Will Meta fuck this up as they seem (in my opinion) to do with most of the acquisitions? Oculus? Drop.io?
- Did they grossly overpay?
- Will innovation slow to a crawl (eg. Instagram, Whatsapp)?
- Will Manus' top talent bail?
- How is it conceivable Meta couldn't build this themselves. It can't possibly have been Manus' user base they were after, can it?
- How much trouble am I in for telling my wife to sell her Meta stock two weeks ago?
The acquisition is confusing to me.
It seems M&A door is wide open for 2026.
Guess it's a good follow on to spending billions to try and catch up in LLMs, which will also be commoditized.
1. Insanely overpriced versus over deep research products 2. Deep research has increasingly become a feature in most other products 3. They shot themselves in the foot by sharing very limited usage credits, in the initial wave of DR products pretty much everything was free - ChatGPT, Claude, Pplx, Deepseek. they rolled this back later and added a free credit tier but by then the hype had moved off.
TBF 1. Their post synthesis, formatting abilities were better than others 2. Their initial launch was "hypey" - lots of waitlist based access.
But I had seen somewhere they mention they had hit $100mn in revenue - M&A also signals that DR is increasingly a feature of the labs. And labs missing an assistant will probably buy a well distributed one
These valuations are to the point point that this looks too close to money laundering, just like buying art.
All these crazy valuations is just a manifestation.
But I suppose they won't try as hard as before to make the product better. It's such a shame. I've been using it since it launched the video by begging everyone I knew and got an invite code. And I've been on the higher end of subscription ever since.
Curious how much Meta paid them.
I understand there's always some optimism for new tech, but the valuations we're seeing seems absurd to me.
Like, do they expect to see x100 profit for the same vertical? Obviously some new markets have been created, but I don't see them solving any particularly novel business problems.