News of Meta’s Manus is getting mixed receptions in Washington and Beijing

Not surprisingly, Meta’s $2 billion acquisition of assistive AI platform Manus has caught up in a regulatory tug of war — but not because of US regulators. They appear confident in the legitimacy of the deal despite previous concerns about Benchmark’s investment in Manus. However, China’s regulatory bodies are said to… Not entirely optimisticaccording to the Financial Times.

When Benchmark led a funding round for Manus earlier this year, the investment sparked immediate controversy. US Senator John Cornyn complained about the deal involving Company X, and the investment led to inquiries from the US Treasury Department about new rules restricting US investment in Chinese AI companies.

The concerns were significant enough to prompt Manos’ eventual move from Beijing to Singapore — part of what prompted the company’s “step-by-step decoupling from China,” as one Chinese professor described it on WeChat last weekend.

Now the tables have turned. Chinese officials are reportedly reviewing whether the Meta deal violates technology export controls, which could give Beijing leverage it was not initially seen as having. Specifically, they are examining whether Manus needed an export license when it moved its core team from China to Singapore – a move that now appears to have become so popular that it has earned the nickname “Singapore laundering.” Modern Wall Street Journal article He speculated that China had “few tools to influence the deal given Manus’s foothold in Singapore,” but that assessment may have been premature.

The concern in Beijing is that this deal could encourage more Chinese startups to physically relocate to avoid local censorship. Winston Ma, a professor at New York University School of Law and a partner at Dragon Capital, told the newspaper that if the deal goes through smoothly, “it creates New path for emerging AI startups in China.”

History suggests Beijing could act. China previously used similar export control mechanisms to interfere with Trump’s attempt to ban TikTok during his first term. The Chinese professor even warned on WeChat that Manus’ founders could face criminal liability if they export the banned technology without permission.

Meanwhile, some US analysts are calling the acquisition a win for Washington’s investment restrictions, arguing that it shows Chinese AI talent is defecting from the US ecosystem. One expert She told the Financial Times that the deal demonstrates that “the US AI ecosystem is currently more attractive.”

It’s too early to tell if this will impact Meta’s plans to integrate Manus’ AI agent software into its products, but this $2 billion deal may have turned out to be more complicated than anyone expected.