Meta has bought Chinese-founded artificial intelligence start-up Manus, as Mark Zuckerberg pours billions of dollars into the fast-developing technology in an effort to compete with OpenAI and Google.
In a statement on Monday, Meta said that it planned to “operate and sell the Manus service” while integrating its technology into its own products, such as its Meta AI chatbot. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The start-up is one of the “leading autonomous general-purpose agents” and its tools can perform tasks that include “market research, coding and data analysis”, Meta said. Businesses can purchase subscriptions to its agents for as little as $20 a month.