There was little detail in the brusque one-line statement with which China this week retrospectively banned Meta’s $2bn acquisition of artificial intelligence app Manus. But the message to Chinese entrepreneurs and early-stage investors was clear: keep your AI technology at home.
The team behind Manus developed the AI agent in China, but moved to Singapore in mid-2025 after receiving a major investment from US venture capital firm Benchmark — a shift that prompted some Chinese online media to call the developers “defectors”. The sale in December of the now Singaporean venture to Facebook’s US owner Meta was seen by Chinese officials to be “conspiratorial”. Beijing has now ordered it to be unwound.
The ruling looks likely to chill foreign investment in Chinese tech start-ups, making it harder for their early-stage investors to exit and closing off one route to growth. It is also likely to deter “Singapore-washing”, the practice of moving headquarters and operations offshore in order to avoid restrictions on access to markets and technologies imposed on Chinese companies by the US and its allies.