[kylecazar]

From their Wikipedia, because I had no idea who they were:

"Following Manus's launch in March 2025, Butterfly Effect raised $75 million in a funding round led by Benchmark at a valuation of approximately $500 million in April 2025."

Half a billion a month after launch and acquisition before the end of the same year. Wild times.

[dinniwang]

There's a saying "follow the money". In this case you just need to follow the people involved in this company and the ones who negotiated this deal from Meta side and you will get the answer why it was acquired and why its valued so high. Financial engineering and social networking at its best.

[bko]

Their wiki says they have ARR over 100m. Pretty impressive for a product that's 9 months old. 20x multiple is high sure, but hardly seems like friends giving friends money for ... reasons

[lokar]

It’s not so hard to get ARR if you don’t care about margin.

[bko]

Cool, sounds like you discovered a life hack. Build something that can get $100m ARR while losing money, sell it, become billionaire.

Build something that can get 1k users. No in fact, build something that can get 100 users!

No offense, but you sounds like someone who has never actually had to build a business or product. It's hard to build something people use, even if its free. This isn't moviepass concept where they're literally selling $10 for $5, but even that's hard to sell! There are plenty of companies that try and fail to get tracking with moviepass economics.

[9cb14c1ec0]

If you are having problems attracting users, even when free, consider that maybe your product doesn't offer much value to them. I say this as someone who has bootstrapped a 7 figure software business.

[bko]

Correct, it's very hard to provide value, which is my point.

As someone who bootstrapped a 7 figure business, would you say getting to 9 figures ARR is easy as long as you don't care about margins?

[giancarlostoro]

> Build something that can get 1k users. No in fact, build something that can get 100 users!

Sam Altman has entered the chat

[femiagbabiaka]

My observation is that 100m ARR in this AI economy is impressive but not particularly rare. There's a lot of hype sales and WoM sales going on.

[judahmeek]

The first R in ARR stands for "Recurring".

A 9 month old company has no evidence to support a claim of any ARR.

[amunozo]

This is so obvious yet it totally got over me (and not only me, it seems).

[ares623]

It really does seem like friends giving friends a piece of the pie before it all blows up.

[throw-12-16]

Congrats, you have summarized the majority of SV startups.

[giancarlostoro]

Sounds like I need better friends, but my moral compass wont let me stoop that low.

[throw-12-16]

Thats why you should recruit a CEO.

[sixtyj]

Manus and Kortix seem to be rare in the way how you interact with them. It looks like that every "chat" is running its own Linux box.

And instead of chat, you can define the results form - table, markdown text, pdf etc. I have tried it and Manus seems to deliver more organised results.

Should be the value of transaction so high? Idk.

But I remember WhatsApp situation… feels the same.

[aylmao]

I think both aquisitions have little to do with the product, and make a lot of sense when you look at the numbers and broader strategy.

WhatsApp had a very clear value at the time of aquisition. It had 450 million users, growth of over 1 million users a day, and was in direct competition with one of Facebook's main products (Messenger) [1].

They did pay $4 billion cash + $15 billion in shares, which is a lot, but overall a not too unreasonable $8 cash + $33 in shares per user to join forces with it's biggest messaging competitor. It not only covered a flank, but catapulted Facebook to own worldwide private messaging overnight.

Manus apparently has "millions of paying users" already [2]. although Manus hasn't been around very long, it's developed by a company that's been around since 2022 [3]. Millions of paying users sounds like a good way for Meta to set foot on the consumer AI product space, which it doesn't seem to be capturing too quickly [4]. It's also based in Singapore and has a lot of Chinese ties, so there might be some strategy there.

[1]: https://about.fb.com/news/2014/02/facebook-to-acquire-whatsa...

[2]: https://archive.is/ykBOm

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manus_(AI_agent)

[3]: https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/20/meta-ais-app-downloads-and...

[basch]

If two $1B companies 'merge' and the surviving entity gives the acquired entity $1B in shares, it didnt 'cost' the acquiring entity anything.

Facebook's stock was up 20% later in the year after the acquisition.

Facebook was worth $134.2-139.2B end of 2013 and $217.5-218.5B end of 2014.

I would say it is misleading to say it cost them $15B in shares if the remaining shares FB kept ended up more valuable after the transaction.

[beAbU]

Whatsapp had almost 0.5b users at the time of acquisition, and it was (still is) wildly popular in emerging markets and europe.

[w11233kf]

The data labeler has been instructed to build products, so he splurges on a company, which, unlike 95% of AI startups, at least has a functioning website.

He is also hiring in Singapore:

https://www.ft.com/content/1bf28a2f-4778-4a83-8276-eaa19d888...

I have never heard of manus.ai before. I hope he checked if the revenue is circular. It does feel like friend/FOMO acquisitions in 1999.

[germinalphrase]

Go on.

[gubicle]

Consider the possibility that the people who make these decisions aren't actually all that smart and are easily manipulated by marketing and the sycophants/impostors they surround themselves with.

[tdeck]

You're telling me the folks who brought us the metaverse that revolutionized our lives are making dumb investments? That's a bold claim.

[fragmede]

Who are you in this scenario though? Are you ManusAI getting bought for a giant pile of money? Are you a vendor that supplies Meta for their VR hardware that's getting paid in money? Are you an employee at Meta getting paid in money and Meta shares to build the Metaverse? Are you a shareholder of Meta who's stock is up? Like, sure, we can sit back and laugh at no legs, but Meta spent money they had on a thing they wanted to do. Sure, it didn't pan out, like that time I tried to pick up scuba diving, but when you have that much money, you can afford to try things that don't work. What's better, to try and fail, or never try because someone might make fun of you? If I just sold a company for half a billion, you could call me all the names you want, I wouldn't be able to hear you over the engines of my private fighter jet.

[germinalphrase]

I understand what they are arguing, but they are just lobbing insinuations at the crowd. I (perhaps wrongly) assumed they had specific insight into the people and relationships inside the transaction that could be shared.

[cheema33]

There is a lot of dumb money chasing AI related anything at this time. And there are people who know how to play the game.

[elAhmo]

Could you elaborate on this?

[echelon]

You should elaborate on this more.

[sa-code]

Please continue

[nrhrjrjrjtntbt]

Aquisitions so fast it is income not capital gains.

[dragonwriter]

Capital gains are a form of income, and have nothing to do with speed (long-term capital gains are distinguished from short-term capital gains by speed, but...)

[nrhrjrjrjtntbt]

Some countries tax will diffferentiate income and capital gains, tax based on speed, and consider capital gains income if you are systematically making money e.g. buying and selling stock multiple times per year even if holding for a while.

[belter]

This means all the new hires at 1 million dollar bonus, and AI specialists at Meta are not getting anywhere. And Manus its not even a model just a wrapper on Claude...Oh Zuck....

[keyle]

Yep, same. Bewildering amounts of silliness, all around.

[echelon]

Meta prints money. This is pocket change for them.

Perhaps just seeing what advanced LLM users are up to is worth the cost. They get a direct peek with this acquisition.

[neilv]

Yet the new AI startups I'm seeing are only offering terrible deals to early hires who could improve their chances of a nice exit.

In this crazy environment -- in which money is flying around over AI much like the dotcom boom, but startup founders are using the last-decade playbook of not sharing the wealth with early hires -- I'm starting to think that smart AI job-seekers need to either:

* get hired by a company that is willing to invest in hiring (i.e., reasonable salary and/or meaningful equity); or

* build some AI application IP at their kitchen table, to sell to a company that's flush with cash, and wants to invest in AI acquisitions.

[torben-friis]

Bubble aside, it feels AI is by nature a less democratic tech.

The need for stupid amounts of data and hardware make it less likely that a really talented person can outcompete companies from their basement. That probably influences culture.

[noobermin]

It's why these people love AI so much. Less of a competition to worry about.

[neilv]

True, but I think there's kitchen table opportunity in applications that don't need to do a big training, and that have tractable inferencing requirements.

The challenges I see are: (1) there's a lot of competition in the gold rush; (2) there's a lot of noise of AI slop implementations, including by anyone who sees your demo.

[Bombthecat]

You also can fine tuned LLMs. For that, you don't need big money. You also can pick up a fine tuned LLM and go from there and make it better ( for your use case)

[bostik]

You've stumbled upon the same trade Matt Levine has been pointing out for a few months now.

If you're good at AI, you could get hired at a top-tier company for 1-2M annual comp, and expect to stay there for at most five (5) years. That's a maximum of 10M pre-tax, and you'd be still on the receiving end of employment gauntlet.

Alternatively you could spin up an AI startup, and get acquired for 75M+ in less than 2 years.

In less surprising news, Matt has pointed out a number of deals that look quite a bit like that throughout 2025.

[neilv]

Interesting. That sounds like the trade for a very credentialed AI person. For random hackers, it's a little different...

There's the job ($250K+ in a VHCOLA, and probably worthless stock options), or their own startup.

I'd distinguish the kitchen table bootstrap startup, from the courting funding and playing the VC game startup.

The bootstrapped startup lets you do whatever product or tech demo you can do, and only that, and then eventually you have to deal with M&A courtship.

The VC track startup, you have to focus on jumping through the hoops of all sorts modern VC investors throughout the process. And among their criteria will be things like what your socioeconomic class is, and which school did you go to, bro. But it's otherwise easy, because you just have to go through the motions and burn VC money and hit their milestones while the hype wave musical chairs music is playing, and worst case is that you're a serial entrepreneur.

Either kind of startup is valid, but bootstrapped could have you spending most of your time on actual AI product work, if you can scope it to be viable with your resources. But you have to work smart and energetically, and worst case is that you run out of personal and revenue money, and then have to do a bunch of job interviewing to beg for a job from the previous category of founder.

This reminds me of when YC seemed to be a response to the dotcom boom environment, a bit "by hackers, for hackers", to help hackers start Internet businesses. Rather than mostly only the non-hackers starting dotcoms (such as with affluent family angel investors and connections). Or rather than hackers having to spend their energy jumping through a lot of hoops, while dealing with disingenuous and exploitative finance bro types.

[zingar]

What’s your definition of “good at AI” sufficient to get 1m+ at a company already bursting with AI people?

[bostik]

Based on the snippets I've gathered from Money Stuff, essentially bleeding-edge researchers with an already established track record and a PhD.

Couple of items I could easily find from my own archive:

    - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2025-09-29/the-perfect-ai-startup
    - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2025-06-26/anyone-can-sell-you-spacex-stock
    - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2025-09-15/elon-musk-bought-some-stock

[amunozo]

Isn't it much more secure to get hired than to spin-out a company that sells for 10M?

[htrp]

good at AI / product / marketing / boring tech infra

all of which are non-overlapping circles

[swyx]

have had 2 outsider estimates (1 public, 1 not, both more well informed than avg HNer) that acquisition was ~$4B worth, def not play money.

i just released the full AIE workshop covering Manus' product surface area if anyone is also out of the loop and wants to catch up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz0-brt56L8

(no vested interest am just friends w Ivan who works there. also as a singaporean i guess this is a small W for the Singapore AI scene)