The Chinese government said on Monday that it would require the unwinding of Meta\u2019s acquisition of Manus, a Singapore-based artificial intelligence company with Chinese founders, in a move that could chill other Chinese entrepreneurs from seeking tie-ups with foreign partners.<\/p>\n
Chinese officials had said in January that they were investigating<\/a> whether Meta\u2019s acquisition of Manus in December violated the country\u2019s rules on foreign investment. They were also assessing whether the deal violated China\u2019s requirements that companies obtain approval for the export of certain technologies.<\/p>\n The National Development and Reform Commission, a high-level ministry that oversees economic planning and plays a central role in setting China\u2019s A.I. policy, said on Monday that it had decided to prohibit foreign investment in Manus, and instructed the parties involved to withdraw the acquisition.<\/p>\n It is not clear how such a transaction would be unwound. Meta has described the two teams as \u201cdeeply integrated.\u201d Members of the Manus team have been working alongside Meta colleagues at the company\u2019s office in Singapore, according to two people familiar with the operation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly.<\/p>\n In a statement, Meta said the transaction fully complied with law, adding \u201cWe anticipate an appropriate resolution to the inquiry.\u201d<\/p>\n The Chinese government issued its decision just a few weeks before a planned meeting between President Trump and China\u2019s leader, Xi Jinping.<\/p>\n The New York Times reported last month<\/a> that officials from the Chinese agency had called in Meta and Manus executives to express concerns about the deal, and that Manus executives had been restricted from departing China, as part of an apparent effort to discourage Chinese A.I. executives from moving businesses offshore.<\/p>\n As companies in China and the United States race to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence, the scrutiny could make it harder for other Chinese firms to attract funding from foreign investors. It could also signal to Chinese researchers not to follow the path Manus took, in which Chinese executives register companies outside China to sidestep regulations from both Washington and Beijing.<\/p>\n Manus is based in Singapore but was founded by Chinese engineers and had a Chinese parent company. The company was incorporated offshore and set up in China as a foreign-owned entity; it has affiliated offices in Beijing and Wuhan, China.<\/p>\n Many Chinese tech founders hope to attract Silicon Valley investors. But in recent years, they have increasingly found themselves needing to choose between targeting the Chinese market or moving their headquarters<\/a> outside China to court foreign investors.<\/p>\n Jianggan Li, chief executive of Momentum Works, a consultancy in Singapore, said scrutiny like the Manus deal was facing \u201cwill make it increasingly hard for Chinese A.I. founders who started in China to sit on both sides or switch to the other side.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere are already a lot of uncertainties starting an A.I. start-up, and most founders are technologists but not politically savvy,\u201d Mr. Li said.<\/p>\n Meta has been spending billions on A.I. researchers and data centers, and its acquisition of Manus formed a rare direct link between talent from both the United States and China.<\/p>\n In recent years, Chinese companies have made up a large share of Meta\u2019s advertising revenue. Meta said on a call with analysts in 2024 that Chinese-based advertisers accounted for 10 percent of its revenue, almost double the amount two years earlier. China\u2019s start-ups that offer games, short video apps and e-commerce have flooded Facebook and Instagram with ads<\/a> as they look to establish a presence outside China.<\/p>\n Xinyun Wu contributed research from Taipei.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Chinese government said on Monday that it would require the unwinding of Meta\u2019s acquisition of Manus, a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":756851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[21],"tags":[691,738,74,240636,3747,158,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-756850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-china","tag-manus","tag-meta-platforms-inc","tag-technology","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116477350767009885","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=756850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/756851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}