What is Wide Research, Manus' new multi-agent AI tool to take on OpenAI and Google?
The feature known as Wide Research is designed to make deep, high-volume research effortless, Manus said in its announcement blog post published on Thursday, July 31. It is said to be the company's most significant launch since its debut in March this year.
Wide Research is seen as Manus' answer to similar research-focused AI features and tools introduced by US rivals such as OpenAI's Deep Research and Google's Deep Think. It also comes weeks after OpenAI's ChatGPT Agent made its debut.
'With the launch of Wide Research, Manus unlocks a powerful new way for users to tackle complex, large-scale tasks that require information on hundreds of items,' Manus said. 'Wide Research marks a milestone in our exploration of the scaling laws of AI agents, but it's just the beginning. The infrastructure behind it is part of something much bigger we're building,' it added.
The newly unveiled feature will be immediately available for paid Pro customers, with plans to roll out to Plus and Basic tier users in the future.
Wide Research is the first feature rolled out by Manus that has been built on top of its large-scale virtualization infrastructure and highly efficient agent architecture which reportedly took 'months of optimisation'.
'At its core, Wide Research is a system-level mechanism for parallel processing, and a protocol for agent-to-agent collaboration,' the company said. Wide Research differs from other multi-agent systems such as specialised AI agent managers or coding assistants because the multiple AI agents that carry out the tasks are general-purpose.
'This generality unlocks flexibility: tasks are not constrained to rigid formats or predefined domains. In practice, the only real limit is your imagination,' Manus said.
In a video posted on X, Manus co-founder Peak Ji demonstrated how Wide Research can be used to quickly conduct research on 100 different sneakers simultaneously or create 50 different poster designs in a matter of minutes.
According to Manus, users will be able to perform deep, high-volume research tasks such as exploring Fortune 500 companies, comparing top MBA programs, or diving into generative AI tools. However, Ji also said that Wide Research is still in the experimental phase and warned that it may come with certain limitations.
Manus made a splash in the AI landscape earlier this year with the launch of its general-purpose AI agent that is capable of autonomously carrying out web-based tasks such as creating trip itineraries in response to basic prompts.
In June this year, the company released its own AI video generator. Manus' AI features are reportedly wrapped around other large language models like Anthropic's Claude. 'Behind every Manus session runs a dedicated cloud-based virtual machine, allowing users to orchestrate complex cloud workloads — simply by talking to an agent,' the company said.
'From generating tailored rental presentations to safely evaluating cutting-edge open-source projects in a secure sandbox, the Turing-completeness of the virtual machine is what gives Manus its generality — and opens the door to endless creative possibilities,' it added.
Manus recently shifted its operations out of China to Singapore, Tokyo and San Mateo, California. It currently does not offer its AI products and tools in China, according to a report by Bloomberg.
Recently, the AI startup raised $75 million in a funding round led by US venture firm Benchmark. Its early investors include Chinese tech giants such as Tencent as well as HSG (formerly Sequoia China) and ZhenFund.
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