{"id":89350,"date":"2025-05-10T06:11:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-10T06:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/89350\/"},"modified":"2025-05-10T06:11:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-10T06:11:08","slug":"the-us-is-reviewing-benchmarks-investment-into-chinese-ai-startup-manus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/89350\/","title":{"rendered":"The US is reviewing Benchmark\u2019s investment into Chinese AI startup Manus\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Manus AI is one of the hottest AI agent startups around, <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/04\/25\/chinese-ai-startup-manus-reportedly-gets-funding-from-benchmark-at-500m-valuation\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">recently raising $75 million<\/a> at a half-billion-dollar valuation in a round led by Benchmark.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But two unnamed sources <a href=\"https:\/\/www.semafor.com\/article\/05\/09\/2025\/us-treasury-examining-benchmark-capitals-ties-to-chinese-startup-manus-ai\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">told Semafor<\/a> that the investment is now under review by the U.S. Treasury Department over its compliance with 2023 restrictions on investing in Chinese companies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Benchmark\u2019s lawyers cleared the investment because Manus isn\u2019t technically developing its own AI models, but is instead a \u201cwrapper\u201d around existing ones, Semafor reported.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Those lawyers also concluded Manus is not China-based since it\u2019s incorporated in the Cayman Islands. (That\u2019s a common structure used by Chinese companies, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/alibaba-ipo-has-unusual-challenges-for-bankers-1407769942\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">like Alibaba<\/a>, to access foreign capital.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Benchmark has attracted criticism for its Manus investment from Founders Fund partner Delian Asparouhov, who posted on X \u201cwow, actions have consequences?\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Benchmark, Manus, and Treasury didn\u2019t immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Manus AI is one of the hottest AI agent startups around, recently raising $75 million at a half-billion-dollar&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89351,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,1942,42471,1395,2902,42472,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-89350","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-benchmark","11":"tag-china","12":"tag-in-brief","13":"tag-manus-ai","14":"tag-technology","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114482058540555503","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}