Manus AI Founder: Who Built Manus and Who Runs It Now

Manus was founded by Xiao Hong, its CEO, together with chief scientist Ji Yichao (who goes by Peak) and co-founder Zhang Tao. The three started the company in China in 2022, launched Manus in March 2025, moved headquarters to Singapore that summer, sold to Meta in December 2025, and are running it again as an independent company since September 2026.

That last part is what most "Manus founder" answers miss. Here's the short version:

• Who founded Manus: Xiao Hong, Ji Yichao, and Zhang Tao. Before Manus, their company, Butterfly Effect, made the Monica AI assistant.
• Who the Manus AI CEO is: Xiao Hong. Manus's own announcements name Xiao Hong as CEO, and the founding team stayed in charge when the company left Meta.
• The ownership twist: Meta bought Manus in December 2025. In April 2026, China's top economic planner ordered the deal reversed. On September 1, 2026, Manus said it had "formally resumed independent operations" under its founding team.
• Why you might care: the separation forced some users to back up and restore their data, and Manus now says its data is stored in the US and Singapore.

Every name, date, and figure below comes from Manus's own blog or a named news outlet.

Who founded Manus

Manus didn't start as a standalone company. It grew out of a startup called Butterfly Effect, which MIT Technology Review described at launch as the company behind "an AI assistant called Monica that was released in 2023." Monica is the browser-based AI assistant many people knew before they ever heard of Manus.

TechCrunch reports that Manus was founded in 2022 by Xiao Hong, Ji Yichao, and Zhang Tao, and that the founders set up Butterfly Effect in Beijing before later moving to Singapore.

Xiao Hong, CEO

Xiao Hong is the Manus AI CEO. When Manus announced it was joining Meta, the post quoted "Xiao Hong, CEO of Manus," saying the deal would let the team build "without changing how Manus works or how decisions are made."

On the company blog, the CEO also appears as Red. Manus's first annual letter, published March 12, 2026, opens with a line attributed to "Red, CEO of Manus": AI "shouldn't just think, it should also do." The same letter says the idea clicked when Manus rebuilt, in one hour, a product that had taken the team over a month to build by hand.

Ji Yichao ("Peak"), chief scientist

If you know one Manus name besides the CEO, it's probably Peak Ji. He wrote the company's most-cited technical post, Context Engineering for AI Agents: Lessons from Building Manus (July 2025).

That post gives the clearest first-hand look at his background. He describes a first decade working in NLP, and a previous startup where he trained models from scratch for open information extraction and semantic search. Those models were made obsolete by GPT-3-era models. That experience is why, he writes, Manus chose to build on frontier models' in-context learning instead of training its own end-to-end agent model.

It shows in the product: MIT Technology Review reported at launch that Manus ran on multiple models, including Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet and fine-tuned versions of Alibaba's Qwen.

Zhang Tao, co-founder

Zhang Tao is the least public of the three. TechCrunch lists Zhang as a co-founder, but the name doesn't appear on the Manus blog posts we checked. We couldn't find a primary source for Zhang's exact title, so this post doesn't assign one.

Manus's 2025: launch, funding, and the move to Singapore

Manus went from invite-only launch to a nine-figure revenue claim in under a year.

The launch

MIT Technology Review covered Manus the week after it launched. At that point, access required an invite code, and the product was built for a global audience with English as the default language. Manus itself describes that launch as "the first General AI Agent": you give it a goal, and it does the multi-step work instead of just answering.

If you want to know what that looks like in practice, our Manus AI guide covers how to use it, and the Manus AI review covers where it's strong and where it isn't. This post sticks to the company.

Funding

In its $100M ARR update, Manus says it raised $75 million led by Benchmark, and places that raise before launch. Benchmark general partner Chetan Puttagunta joined the board alongside the founders. TechCrunch reported the round in April 2025, weeks after launch, at a $500 million post-money valuation, and, citing Chinese media, that Tencent, ZhenFund, and HSG (formerly Sequoia China) had invested earlier.

That same Manus post gives a snapshot of the company in December 2025:

• $100 million ARR, and a total revenue run rate above $125 million including usage-based revenue
• 105 employees across Singapore, Tokyo, and San Francisco, with a Paris office planned
• More than 147 trillion tokens processed and more than 80 million virtual computers created since launch

These are Manus's own numbers, not independently verified figures.

The move to Singapore

Manus now operates from Singapore. CNBC reported that the startup moved its headquarters there in June 2025 as it looked toward global expansion, and reportedly laid off most of its Beijing staff in July. Manus's own posts confirm the Singapore base but don't comment on the layoffs.

The Meta deal, and why it was reversed

This is where the "who owns Manus" question gets complicated.

December 2025: Meta buys Manus

On December 29, 2025, Manus announced it was joining Meta. Manus said it would keep selling its subscription through its own app and website, and that the company "will continue to operate from Singapore."

Neither company disclosed a price. TechCrunch and CNBC both cited The Wall Street Journal's report that Meta paid about $2 billion. According to CNBC, Meta also said it would wind down Manus's remaining operations in China and that "there will be no continuing Chinese ownership interests" once the deal closed.

January to April 2026: China steps in

CNBC reported that in January 2026, China's Ministry of Commerce said it would look into whether the deal broke rules on export controls, technology import and export, and overseas investment. A Meta spokesperson told CNBC the deal "complied fully with applicable law."

On April 27, 2026, China's National Development and Reform Commission said it had decided to prohibit foreign investment in Manus, and told the parties to withdraw the transaction. TechCrunch described it as one of China's most significant interventions in a cross-border deal.

August to September 2026: Manus goes independent again

On August 11, 2026, Manus published a note to its users saying it would "soon return to operating as an independent company." It called this "part of our separation from Meta." Then on September 1, 2026, it announced it had resumed independent operations: "Our founding team will continue to lead the company."

Who owns Manus now? Manus's announcement doesn't say, and no investor has published an official statement on the post-Meta shareholding. Treat any cap-table figure you see as unconfirmed until Manus or its investors publish one.

What the founder and ownership story means for Manus users

If you just use Manus, you probably care about two things: whether the product is going to change, and where your data is.

Product direction

Leadership didn't change. The same founders ran Manus before Meta, during Meta, and after, so you shouldn't expect a sudden change in product philosophy.

Manus's September post describes where it's headed as an "independent agent lab": Manus will become "more deeply embedded in your everyday workflows," interact "more directly with the world around you," and "act more proactively on your behalf." The March 2026 annual letter pointed the same way: agents that run 24/7, and apps for people who have never written code.

What's gone is the Meta distribution plan. In December, Manus said it hoped to reach "billions of people on Meta's platforms." That was the reason for the deal, and it's no longer happening.

Data residency and privacy

The August note is the most useful thing to read if you had a Manus account in 2026. Here's what it said:

Manus didn't say which jurisdictions or users were affected. It notified affected accounts in the app and by email; unaffected users didn't need to do anything.

For deeper questions about data handling, Manus sends users to its Trust Center. If company ownership is part of how you pick an AI agent, our Manus alternatives roundup sorts the options by how they work. If you'd rather host an agent yourself, OpenManus is the open-source project built after Manus's invite-only launch. Be aware that running it yourself means handling the setup.

Key points

• Manus's founders: Xiao Hong (CEO), Ji Yichao "Peak" (chief scientist), and Zhang Tao, who founded the company in China in 2022 under the name Butterfly Effect, the maker of Monica.
• Manus launched in March 2025, raised $75 million led by Benchmark, and moved its headquarters to Singapore in mid-2025.
• Meta bought Manus in December 2025. China ordered the deal unwound in April 2026, and Manus resumed independent operations on September 1, 2026, with the same founding team.
• For users: some accounts had to back up and restore data during the separation, and Manus says its data is now stored in the US and Singapore.

Manus's founders are building toward agents that act proactively and run all day. If what you really want is a workflow you can keep, Taku takes a different approach. You mirror an AI app or workflow someone already got working, run it in your own desktop workspace, and save it to use again instead of re-briefing an agent each time. Taku is in Beta, and the Mac app is available now.

FAQ

Who is the founder of Manus AI? Manus was founded by Xiao Hong, Ji Yichao (Peak), and Zhang Tao. According to TechCrunch, they started in 2022 with a company called Butterfly Effect, which also made the Monica AI assistant.

Who is the Manus AI CEO? Xiao Hong. Manus's own announcements name Xiao Hong as CEO, and the company's first annual letter quotes its CEO as "Red." Manus said in September 2026 that its founding team still leads the company.

Who is Peak Ji at Manus? Ji Yichao, known as Peak, is Manus's co-founder and chief scientist. He wrote Manus's context engineering post, which describes his background in NLP and a previous startup.

Is Manus owned by Meta? Not anymore. Meta bought Manus in December 2025, but China's National Development and Reform Commission ordered the deal reversed in April 2026. Manus resumed independent operations on September 1, 2026. Manus hasn't published who its shareholders are now.

Is Manus a Chinese company? It was founded in China and moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2025, and it operates from Singapore today. Manus says its user data is stored in the US and Singapore.

Did the Meta separation delete Manus user data? For some users, yes. Data those users created on or after December 29, 2025 was deleted on August 23 to 24, 2026, after a backup window. Manus says affected users can restore their backups, with no deadline, and that the deletion wasn't caused by a security incident.