AI Agent Manus Parent Butterfly Effect Completes More Than $500 Million in Funding

Butterfly Effect, the parent company of Manus, announced it has completed a new funding round exceeding $500 million, marking the largest single investment for an AI-native agent startup in China.

The round was led by Boyu Investment and IDG Capital, with existing investors Tencent, Sequoia China, and ZhenFund participating. Bloomberg previously reported that the company aimed to raise this amount at a $4 billion valuation, doubling its previous $2 billion mark.

This capital injection follows the September release of Manus 2.0 and the multi-agent application Cue. The company claims its new Cascade architecture significantly reduces token consumption and operational costs. This funding will support Manus's global expansion amidst intense competition from giants like OpenAI and Anthropic, who are embedding agent capabilities into their core products, as well as evolving open-source projects.