China's Manus AI Emerges as White-Collar Taskmaster
Within just a week of its March launch, Manus had already amassed a waitlist of two million users
You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
A new AI platform named Manus is turning heads in the global tech community for its ability to handle tasks traditionally performed by white-collar professionals. Developed by Beijing-based startup Butterfly Effect, Manus AI has moved beyond its invite-only model, opening to the public after a successful funding round and rapid user adoption.
Within just a week of its March launch, Manus had already amassed a waitlist of two million users. The platform, now offering 1,000 free credits for new users and 300 credits daily for free accounts, aims to rapidly expand its user base in an increasingly competitive AI market.
Manus is designed as an agentic AI model—capable of perceiving, reasoning, and acting independently, built using Anthropic's Claude and Alibaba's Qwen models. It can perform tasks such as trip planning, overseas relocation research, and financial statement analysis within seconds. With integration capabilities across various applications, Manus can also automate emails, provide customer support, offer voice recognition, generate content, and deliver personalised recommendations.
The platform's momentum was further bolstered by a USD 75 million funding round led by US-based Benchmark Capital, valuing Butterfly Effect at USD 500 million. This positions the company among China's most promising AI startups since the emergence of DeepSeek AI.
In a move that underscores its ambitions, Butterfly Effect has also entered a strategic collaboration with Alibaba Cloud to develop general-purpose AI solutions, setting the stage for Manus to become a key player in the global AI race.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNBC
18 minutes ago
- CNBC
Morgan Stanley upgrades this mining stock as best pick to play rare earths
The rare-earth miner MP Materials will enjoy growing strategic value to the U.S., as geopolitical tensions with China make the supply of critical minerals more uncertain, according to Morgan Stanley. The investment bank upgraded MP Materials to the equivalent of a buy rating with a stock price target of $34 per share, implying 32% upside from Friday's close. MP Materials owns the only operating rare earth mine in the U.S. at Mountain Pass, California. China dominates the global market for rare earth refining and processing, according to Morgan Stanley. "Geopolitical and trade tensions are finally pushing critical mineral supply chains to top of mind," analysts led by Carlos De Alba told clients in a Thursday note. "MP is the most vertically integrated rare earths company ex-China." Beijing imposed export restrictions on seven rare earth elements in April in response to President Donald Trump's tariffs. It has kept those restrictions in place despite trade talks with U.S. Trump removed some restrictions Wednesday on the Defense Production Act, which could allow the federal government to offer an above market price for rare earths. MP Materials is the best positioned company to benefit from this, according to Morgan Stanley. Its shares rose more than 5% on Thursday. MP Materials is developing fully domestic rare earth supply chain in the U.S. and plans to begin commercial production of magnets used in most electric vehicle motors, offshore wind wind turbines, and the future market for humanoid robots, according to Morgan Stanley. The investment bank expects MP Materials to post negative free cash flow this year and in 2026, but the company has a strong balance sheet should accelerate positive free cash flow from 2027 onward.
Bloomberg
20 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Changing the Rules of the Game with China and With Those Pesky Lawyers
Welcome to the Wall Street Week newsletter, bringing you stories of capitalism about things you need to know, but even more things you need to think about. I'm David Westin, and this week we held a roundtable discussion with Larry Summers of Harvard and Niall Ferguson of the Hoover Institution about the future of China and explored the developing world of investing in law firms. If you're not yet a subscriber, sign up here for this newsletter. President Donald Trump held his long-awaited phone call with President Xi Jinping of China this week, trying to find a way forward for the relationship between their two countries. Though things may be moving forward, there is a long way to go to address what the president says is "hundreds of billions of dollars a year we lose with China.' US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says "we have a plan, we have a process," and that "over the next 90 days we can accomplish a lot."
CNET
31 minutes ago
- CNET
At WWDC, How Will Apple Address Its Lackluster First Year of Apple Intelligence?
At WWDC 2025, how is Apple going to spin what can be objectively seen as a year of AI promises unkept? Leading up to WWDC 2024, AI had broken into the mainstream, capturing the imagination of early adopters and the general public. Services like Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT showcased features that used large language models and generative AI to write, search the internet and create near-photorealistic artwork in a way that only books and movies had imagined before. AI was the future, and all the major tech companies needed to be pointed in that direction. But Apple, being secretive by nature, kept its AI plans closely guarded. By the time Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, took the stage during last year's WWDC keynote presentation, analysts and financial experts thought the company had fallen way behind on AI, especially after Google featured nothing but AI at its Google I/O event. When Cook introduced Apple Intelligence at WWDC, the collection of features was a more modest approach to incorporating AI into the iPhone and Mac. Far from seeming like a straggler, Apple had us praising a measured, practical rollout. Instead of throwing more slop against the wall, Apple Intelligence promised to focus on practical features like notification summaries and removing distractions from photos. Siri was going to be the loom that wove together various threads of your personal information and become a true virtual assistant. But after a slow rollout of Apple Intelligence features, we learned about Siri's internal struggles, and Apple acknowledged that progress was "going to take us longer than we thought." Now it's unclear whether Siri will advance significantly at all this year. So how will Apple deal with this AI-generated elephant in the room? Will the presenters hype what's been accomplished so far? Or maybe ignore the issue altogether and focus on whatever is coming next? That seems like the most likely -- the most Apple -- way for this to go. However, let's not forget that WWDC as a whole is still primarily an event for developers, treating them like members of an exclusive club even as the keynote event serves to showcase technologies that will dominate the rest of the year for everyone else. Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, has consistently delivered news with a light touch. As just one example, the fabulously coiffed exec, sometimes referred to as "Hair Force One," even donned a silver hair-shaped helmet during the introduction to WWDC 2024 in the guise of parachuting over Apple's Cupertino, California, campus. "Hair Force One," Craig Federighi, prepares to skydive into last year's WWDC keynote presentation. Apple/Screenshot by Jeff Carlson/CNET And even though tech giants like Apple and Google are laser-focused on competing to own the AI future, they're not always so serious that they don't poke fun at each other, as Rohan Shah, senior product manager, Android platform, did during this year's Google I/O Android Show when he mentioned that Gemini "isn't just an app," and continued out of the side of his mouth, "like on some other phones." I'm guessing Federighi will have a few clever lines acknowledging that Apple's aspirations were higher than the state of the art, give the audience a "we all know what I mean" knowing wink, and then push through to what's new in the next versions. Because honestly, we'll all be wondering how Apple is going to move forward to make up the ground it's lost so far. We'll know for sure during the WWDC 2025 keynote presentation on Monday, June 9, which Apple will stream live starting at 10 a.m. PT. Members of the CNET team are attending the event to report on developments as they drop -- hopefully not from the sky by parachute this year.
