Over 3.3 billion yuan! Manus secured the largest single financing round for a domestic Agent startup, with Tencent investing in it

Smart Things Author | Cheng Qian Editor | Yunpeng Smart Things reported on October 8 that just now, Butterfly Effect, the parent company of Manus, announced that it has recently completed a new round of financing of over US$500 million (approximately RMB 3.352 billion). This is the largest financing received by a domestic Agent-original startup. This round of financing was led by Boyu Investments and IDG Capital, with continued support from existing shareholders Tencent, Sequoia China, and Zhen Fund. In September this year, foreign media Bloomberg reported that Butterfly Effect plans to raise US$500 million (approximately RMB 3.35 billion) at a valuation of US$4 billion (approximately RMB 26.83 billion), which is fully double the previous valuation of US$2 billion. It is expected to make Butterfly Effect, the parent company of Manus, the most valuable AI Agent startup in China. Just on September 29, Manus released Manus version 2.0 and the multi-Agent group chat application Cue. This is the first major version update since it officially resumed independent operations on September 1. On September 1 this year, Manus announced that it would officially resume independent operations. Manus's three co-founders, CEO Xiao Hong, chief scientist Ji Yichao, and product partner Zhang Tao, will continue to lead the company, and revealed that innovative results will be released soon. Manus 2.0 uses the self-developed Agent framework Cascade. Relying on this framework, projects created by users can remain lightweight from the initial stage, and the corresponding professional capabilities are only called upon when the task has actual needs. In a test configuration, Cascade reduced token consumption by 23.2%, task completion time by 28.2%, and operating costs by 32% compared to Manus' previous system. This shows that under this architecture, the task completion effect is better and the loss is less. In the official announcement tweet, Butterfly Effect stated that it is recruiting 17 positions at home and abroad. From December 30 last year to the present, Manus has been suspended from being acquired by Meta, and now it has resumed independent operations, with financing and product launches back on track. Conclusion: Manus has to face the double attack of giants and open source projects. The butterfly effect has won a large amount of money this time.