China is investigating whether Meta’s acquisition of the artificial intelligence startup Manus violated its laws on technology exports and outbound investment.
Those rules say that the Chinese government must approve the export of certain technologies, including interactive artificial intelligence systems. Manus is based in Singapore but was founded by Chinese engineers and had a Chinese parent company. Beijing has used the same grounds to claim final sign-off on any sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations.
China’s Ministry of Commerce is evaluating whether Meta violated those rules when it acquired Manus last month, He Yadong, a ministry spokesman, said on Thursday.
Manus drew attention from Silicon Valley last March when it launched an A.I. agent, or tool, that could be directed to build websites and do other basic coding tasks on its own. At the time, the American tech industry was reeling from the announcement that the Chinese startup DeepSeek had created a high-performing A.I. system for far less than leading U.S. companies had spent. By December, Manus said it had surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue.
Meta’s deal for Manus capped a year of extravagant spending by the Silicon Valley company on artificial intelligence researchers.
Last June, Meta made its largest investment since its acquisition of WhatsApp in 2014 when it invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI, a start-up that works with data to train artificial intelligence systems. Meta did not disclose the terms of its acquisition of Manus.
China’s investigation into the transaction comes as questions swirl in Washington and Beijing about the fate of TikTok’s U.S. operations and whether regulators will block Chinese companies from gaining access to A.I. chips made by Nvidia, the American chip maker.
Officials in Beijing have pushed companies in China to buy domestic chips and warned that Nvidia’s chips may carry risks.
For many Chinese tech start-ups, the aspiration is to launch the next global hit product, like TikTok. Yet none want to end up like the Chinese parent of TikTok, ByteDance, which saw its executives questioned before Congress about the company’s ties to the Chinese government.
The prospect of intense scrutiny from regulators in both Washington and Beijing pushes Chinese entrepreneurs to choose between two paths for growth: catering to the Chinese market or pursuing a global audience outside China. For those without access to international investors, the first is the only feasible option.
Chinese officials need to weigh these enterprises’ prospects for growth when drawing up the country’s technology export regulations, Cui Fan, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, wrote in a blog post.
Meta and Manus did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Manus trained its agent using A.I. systems built by other companies including Alibaba of China and Anthropic of the United States. Two of the company’s early investors were former employees of Robinhood, the investing app.
Siyi Zhao contributed reporting.
Meaghan Tobin covers business and tech stories in Asia with a focus on China and is based in Taipei.
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