China's AI agent Manus relocates HQ to Singapore

China's AI (artificial intelligence) agent Manus, which gained significant attention after its launch this March, has relocated its headquarters from Beijing to Singapore and is downsizing its domestic team in China, reports said on Friday.

Manus' official accounts on Chinese social media platforms, including Weibo and Xiaohongshu, appear to have been cleared. A previous Weibo post from March announcing a partnership with Tongyi Qianwen, a chatbot developed by Alibaba Cloud, has also been deleted. A former employee confirmed to lanjinger.com that the planned collaboration will no longer proceed.

The same employee, affected by the recent restructuring, told lanjinger.com that Manus is unlikely to maintain any offices or business teams in China, with all operations moving to its new headquarters in Singapore.

Manus co-founder Zhang Tao stated at the SuperAI conference in Singapore on June 18 that while the company's headquarters is currently based in Singapore, it also has offices in Tokyo, Japan, and California, United States.

According to a report by financial and tech information platform TMTPost, Manus had about 120 employees in China. Over 40 key technical staff members have been transferred to the Singapore office, while the rest were laid off.

According to AI product ranking site aicpb.com, Manus performed strongly in its early days, reaching 23.76 million web visits in March and ranking 36th among AI products. However, its traffic has steadily declined since.

Though Manus was initially hyped by online influencers as a groundbreaking innovation, it has faced criticism for lacking real technological breakthroughs. Critics argue that it acts more as a "shell", relying on existing large models and toolchains rather than developing original technology.