The least surprising topic of the Manus story is what is happening right now

Okay, so the US and China are locked in a complete race to develop the world’s most powerful AI. Beijing is throwing billions at homegrown brands, strengthening its grip on technology, and eyeing it with trepidation as its best AI talent. they go to US companies. A Carnegie Endowment study published late last year found that 87 of the top 100 Chinese AI researchers in US institutions in 2019 are still there.

Yet Manus – one of China’s biggest AI startups – quietly moved to Singapore and sold itself to Meta for $2 billion. Did anyone think that there no be the accountant on this deal?

As industry watchers know, Manus came out last year with a demonstration video showing an AI agent screening job candidates, planning vacations, and analyzing stocks, and excitedly announced that it won OpenAI’s Deep Survey. A few weeks later, Benchmark – Silicon Valley’s largest company – led a $75 million investment at a $500 million valuation. That was amazing. (Senator John Cornyn had ideas, tweeting at the time, “Who thinks it’s a good idea for American investors to fund our arch-enemy in AI, for the CCP to use this technology against us economically and militarily? Not me.”)

As of December, Manus had millions of users and pulled in more than $100 million in annual revenue. Then Meta came calling, and Mark Zuckerberg, who staked the company’s future on AI, took $2 billion.

It’s worth noting that Manus didn’t just sell himself to the American consumer; it spent the better part of the last year trying to work outside of the Chinese way. The company moved its headquarters and core team from Beijing to Singapore, restructured its ownership, and after the Meta deal was announced, Meta. promised to cancel any contract and Manus’ Chinese investors and shut down its operations in China entirely. Either way, Manus is trying to establish itself as a Singaporean company.

But if this series of events raised eyebrows in Washington, you can only imagine that in Beijing, they were apoplectic.

China has a word for all of this: “selling small crops” — Homegrown AI companies that move abroad and sell themselves to foreign buyers before they mature, take their intelligence and skills.

Beijing hates it and has spent years ensuring that no company operating abroad can reach it. Of course, we all remember that time Jack Ma spoke in 2020, slightly criticizing Chinese regulators, after which he disappeared from the public for several months, Ant Group’s IPO was killed overnight, and Alibaba was fined $2.8 billion. China then spent the next two years demolishing their growing technology sector, costing hundreds of billions in the market. Chinese leaders are many things, but secrecy is not one of them.

That’s why it came as no surprise when, on Tuesday, the Financial Times reported that Manus co-founders Xiao Hong and Ji Yichao were invited to a meeting this month by China’s National Development and Reform Commission and told that they he would not be leaving the country for a while. No charges have been filed – just questions about whether the Meta deal violated Beijing’s foreign policy.

Beijing calls it a regular inspection.

At one point, someone in Manus probably thought he would leave, and maybe he will. But given the amount of AI competition, it was always a big gamble. Now Beijing wants answers; The founders of Manus are apparently not going anywhere until they find them.