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The bonds that bind
The founders of Manus, Xiao Hong and Ji Yichao, have already moved most of their team from China to Meta’s office in Singapore and have tried to cut off any Chinese ties in preparation for the takeover of Meta late last year – even refusing requests from Chinese officials for meetings or funding, according to The Wire China. They opened the way to move to Singapore by registering the company Butterfly Effect Pte and establishing Butterfly Effect Holding as a parent company based in the Cayman Islands.
Now, the Chinese government’s decision to ban the deal creates more uncertainty for Manus and Meta’s future AI plans. For example, Manus can’t continue to send his AI work using Claude’s Anthropic models, because Anthropic sale of AI prohibited to Chinese institutions. “If Manus had remained a Chinese company, its biggest asset would have disappeared,” said Chris McGuire, a former Biden security chief who created US restrictions on technology products and businesses related to China, in an interview with The Wire China.
The termination of the contract will also represent the return of Meta Pivot to AI, which comes after the US technology company. spent $80 billion for half a decade trying to make the metaverse work with consumers. In addition to integrating the Manus AI assistant into its operations, Meta has “deeply integrated” the Manus team with the Meta teams in the Singapore office, according to The New York Times.
What is clear is that Chinese tech startups face little hope when trying to transition from being a homegrown Chinese company to a US tech startup. The apparent failure in this case of “Singapore-washing”, which is often used by Chinese tech startups when trying to re-establish their company outside of China, shows that startups will need to think about setting up shop outside of China from “day one,” said Wayne Shiong, a partner at Silicon Valley seed company Argo Venture Partners, in Price CNBC interview.
