Published:
Manus, the Singapore-based AI agent company, announced on August 11, 2026 that it will resume operating as an independent company after China’s National Development and Reform Commission ordered Meta to unwind its December 2025 acquisition, a deal valued at approximately $2 billion. The NDRC issued the unwind directive in April 2026, citing foreign investment rules, months after the deal had already closed. Meta has since cut Manus staff off from its internal data systems and barred Meta employees from using Manus tools. Manus will delete data generated by users in certain jurisdictions on or after December 29, 2025, the acquisition date, and those users must back up their accounts before 7:59 a.m. SGT on August 23, 2026. Manus is not shutting down: the company said it is preparing new features for its AI agents.
What China’s Order Did to the Meta Deal
China’s National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s top economic planning body, blocked a completed acquisition of a Singapore-incorporated company by a US company. The NDRC treated Manus as subject to Chinese foreign investment review because Manus was founded in China in 2022 and its founders and core engineering team are Chinese nationals, before the company relocated its base to Singapore.
Meta acquired Manus in December 2025 to integrate agentic capabilities across its consumer and enterprise offerings as part of its AI subscription monetization plan, according to CNBC.
What Affected Manus Users Must Do Before August 22
Affected users must back up their Manus data before the backup window closes at 7:59 a.m. SGT on August 23, 2026, which is 7:59 p.m. EDT on August 22 and 1:59 a.m. CEST on August 23. Manus deletes the qualifying data between 8:00 a.m. SGT on August 23 and August 24, and opens its restoration portal at 8:00 a.m. SGT on August 25.
Four operational details govern the window. The deletion covers only data generated on or after December 29, 2025, by users in specific jurisdictions that Manus has not named publicly. Affected accounts lose access entirely for the two deletion days, August 23 and August 24. The backup tool supports repeated backups, so any task data created after a first backup requires a second one. Manus is not billing affected users between August 11 and August 23 SGT and has promised restoration bonuses.
“As part of our transition back to independent operations and to comply with regulatory requirements in specific jurisdictions, data generated by certain users on/after December 29, 2025, will be deleted from 8:00 a.m. on August 23 through August 24, 2026 (SGT).” — Manus, “A Note to Our Users”, manus.im
Manus stated the deletion is not the result of a data breach or security incident, and said its data is stored in the United States and Singapore. Users who registered with an Apple ID or Facebook account receive in-app notifications only, because Manus holds no email address for them.
What Meta Loses and Which AI Agents Gain
Meta loses its largest agentic AI asset at the moment enterprise buyers are actively selecting agent vendors. Manus debuted in early 2025 as a general-purpose AI agent that executes multi-step tasks autonomously, including booking travel, producing reports, and running research, at a time when most competitors shipped chatbots.
Competing vendors gain a reprieve. Cognition’s Devin, OpenAI’s Operator, and Google’s Gemini agents now face a Manus that must rebuild its distribution alone rather than a Manus wired into Meta’s enterprise channel. Buyers comparing the best AI agents for business tasks should treat vendor jurisdiction and ownership stability as procurement criteria alongside capability, because this unwind deleted customer data as a side effect of a corporate structure question. The same reasoning applies when mapping examples of AI agents in business to a workflow: the agent’s owner determines where the data lives.
For Context: Our AI Agent Coverage
The Manus unwind joins a run of stories about who controls AI agents and the data they generate.
- Humans miss 1 in 3 AI agent threats — the 40,000-run study on AI agent oversight risks.
- Cloudflare Kitesurf, the AI agent browser that cuts costs 3.7x — the infrastructure layer AI agent tools now run on.
Our Take: Meta bet $2 billion on AI agents and lost the bet to geopolitics, not to a competitor. A regulator in Beijing reached across a Singapore incorporation and reversed a closed US acquisition, and paying customers are the ones spending this week backing up their work. Manus emerges independent and intact — and as proof that an AI vendor’s cap table now belongs in your risk register.
