alt Hacker News> After a $75 million fundraising round led by U.S. venture firm Benchmark in May 2025, Manus shut its China offices in July, laying off dozens of employees. It then moved its operations to Singapore.
> It was not immediately clear on what grounds China was seeking the annulment of a deal involving a Singapore-based company and how, if at all, a completed acquisition transaction would be unwound.
> Manus' two co-founders, CEO Xiao Hong and chief scientist Ji Yichao, were summoned to Beijing for talks with regulators in March and later barred from leaving the country, five sources familiar with the matter said.
Will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Replies
The co-founders have roots in China. As such it's already a done deal that China will get its way.
The two cofounders will not be able to work for Meta. Probably it will be complicated to distribute Manus in Hong Kong, possibly Singapore too.
But Manus's IP was already transferred and in any case Meta is not legally doing business in China, so Manus will still live on, possibly get rebranded.
Dealt with is the founders / team / investors losing out of the $2B. That’s the punishment from China.
Their mistake was not reading the tea-leaves. Just as Youxia Zhang, Weidong He, etc. Although to be fair the party elders and generals were in a no-win situation. They could not just "leave."
They were likely baited to come in with some pretense and once they had them, they would not and will not let them get away.
Looks like the issue will be “dealt with” though we don’t know how exactly.
I suspect this is more of a warning shot to others attempting the same playbook ("Singapore-washing", as I've heard folks call it): the state is watching, and shifting geopolitics means it's in their interest to retain successful talent and entities at home rather than let opposition have them.
If anything, I'm genuinely surprised it took them this long. America's been doing this for decades without much in the way of pushback, so China must feel very confident in its position to use such tactics.
It's easy to see how this will play out. The entrepreneurs will get nothing. Most likely everyone else that has been paid (investors, etc) will keep what they received. Whether Meta or the CCP ends up with the proceeds of the entrepreneurs, that's anyone's guess.
The third quote seems to invalidate the second, no? Under the "grounds" that key people are currently physically in China, and as such, the Chinese government can coerce them to do whatever it wants.
Though I suppose if those two did not have majority ownership of the company, the actual (former) majority owners can refuse to unwind the sale regardless of their wishes. Company might be worth quite a bit less to Meta without those key people, though. Either way, I assume the two people stuck in China won't be seeing a dime of that sale price, which is not cool.
(This is regardless of my feelings about Meta owning more AI capability...)