Manus (AI agent)

Manus (meaning hands in Latin) is an autonomous artificial intelligence agent developed by the Chinese startup Monica, based in Singapore. The agent is designed to independently carry out complex real-world tasks without direct or continuous human guidance. It is recognized as one of the world's first autonomous agents capable of independent thinking, dynamic planning, and decision-making.^[2][3]

Manus
Developer(s)	Monica (also known as Butterfly Effect AI[1])
Initial release	March 6, 2025; 4 months ago (2025-03-06)
Type	Multimodal Large language model Generative pre-trained transformer Foundation model
License	Proprietary
Website	manus.im

Xiao Hong is the key person behind Manus.im. Early in his career, he founded Nightingale Technology, which created productivity tools like “Yi Ban Assistant” and “Wei Ban Assistant”, the AI-driven platforms that served millions of enterprise users. Known for his “kitbashing” approach, Xiao focused on enhancing existing platforms such as WeChat by seamlessly integrating AI capabilities.^[4] He had stepped down as a shareholder of Monica in December 2024.

History

Manus was founded to create artificial intelligence agents capable of operating independently, based on large language models (LLM). The official launch of Manus was on March 6, 2025. VentureBeat described Manus as a major advance because it could autonomously handle complex tasks, including writing and deploying code.^[5] Manus was described as a turning point in the development of artificial intelligence due to its ability to operate entirely without direct human intervention and complete complex tasks autonomously, including writing and deploying code.^[5]

On July 11, all content on Manus’ official accounts on Weibo and Xiaohongshu was wiped. When accessing Manus’ official website from mainland China, the message no longer reads “The Chinese version of Manus is under development,” but instead says “Manus is not available in your region.”.^[6][7] The collaboration between Manus and Alibaba’s Tongyi Qianwen to develop a Chinese version is reportedly “no longer moving forward,” according to an employee. Manus is also expected to shut down its physical offices and business operations in China, relocating its entire team to its new headquarters in Singapore.^[8]