Tech giant Meta has announced it will buy artificial intelligence startup Manus in a rare crossover of US and Chinese technology amid Washington and Beijing’s heated tech rivalry.

Meta said the acquisition would see it take over the operation of Manus’s self-directing AI agent and integrate the technology into its own products.

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Manus, which was founded in China in 2022 but relocated to Singapore earlier this year, bills its agent as a “virtual colleague” capable of “planning, executing, and delivering complete work products from start to finish”.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said the deal would bring one of the “leading autonomous general-purpose agents” to billions of people worldwide.

“Manus’s exceptional talent will join Meta’s team to deliver general-purpose agents across our consumer and business products, including in Meta AI,” the California-based firm said in a statement on Monday.

“We’re excited to welcome the Manus team and help improve the lives of billions of people and millions of businesses with their technology.”

Manus founder and CEO Xiao Hong hailed the deal as a retort to sceptics of autonomous AI.

“We were told it was too early, too ambitious, too hard. But we kept building. Through the doubts, the setbacks, and the countless nights wondering if we were chasing the impossible. We weren’t,” Xiao said on social media.

“The era of AI that doesn’t just talk, but acts, creates, and delivers, is only beginning,” Xiao added.

“And now, we get to build it at a scale we never could have imagined.”

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The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Manus, which claims to have created more than 80 million virtual computers, generated major buzz in tech circles almost immediately following its launch in March, drawing comparisons to the frenzy that surrounded the arrival of the Chinese-developed chatbot DeepSeek.

Tech analysts have offered mixed assessments of Manus’s agent, whose capabilities include being able to create travel itineraries and analyse stocks with minimal human intervention.

Manus earlier this month announced that its annual recurring revenue had surpassed $100m, claiming to be the fastest startup in history to achieve the milestone.