Meta Platforms is preparing to unwind its $2.5 billion acquisition of Manus, a Singapore-based artificial intelligence startup, after China’s top economic planning authority ordered the deal reversed on national security grounds. The directive came Monday from the National Development and Reform Commission, which set a preliminary deadline of several weeks for both companies to restore Manus’s Chinese assets to their original state.
Meta announced the Manus deal in December 2025. The startup had built a general-purpose AI agent capable of executing complex tasks autonomously — from market research to software coding — and relocated from China to Singapore before the acquisition closed. The commission’s Office of the Working Mechanism for Security Review of Foreign Investment concluded the transaction violated Chinese law and directed all parties to withdraw. Regulators have signaled they may impose financial penalties on both companies if the deal cannot be fully rescinded.
Under the reversal terms, Meta must remove any data or technology transferred from Manus and return the startup’s Chinese assets to pre-deal condition. Former Manus investors including Tencent, HSG, and ZhenFund have indicated they intend to cooperate. Benchmark, the venture firm that led Manus’s $75 million Series B in April 2025, has already received its return. The ban arrived weeks before a planned mid-May summit between President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, a signal that Beijing now treats frontier AI capabilities as a national security asset off-limits to American acquirers.
The ruling carries direct stakes for South Carolina’s export economy. BMW Manufacturing in Spartanburg County shipped nearly 200,000 vehicles worth $9 billion to nearly 120 markets in 2025 — the largest U.S. automotive export haul by value — and China is part of that distribution network. At USC Upstate, administrators have built AI workforce curriculum to prepare Spartanburg-area graduates for automation-driven careers; the Manus episode illustrates how quickly geopolitical friction can reshape the sector those graduates are training to enter.
