Chinese authorities have blocked Meta's acquisition of Manus, a China-based artificial intelligence (AI) startup, in what analysts describe as a hardline move to prevent the leakage of domestic advanced technology amid the hegemonic rivalry with the United States.
According to Reuters on Thursday (local time), the Foreign Investment Security Review Office under China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) announced the previous day that it had "decided to prohibit the acquisition of Manus by foreign capital." While the NDRC did not disclose the specific parties to the deal or the reasons for the action, the decision was interpreted as referring to Meta's agreement last December to acquire Manus for $2 billion (about 2.95 trillion won). Meta has indeed begun procedures to scrap the Manus acquisition following the NDRC's decision, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The move is seen as China invoking national security to tighten control over its domestic technology. Founded in 2022, Manus has earned recognition for its technical prowess, becoming the first in the world to develop a general-purpose AI agent. Chinese authorities launched a security review in January, shortly after Meta's acquisition of Manus was announced, and last month summoned Manus executives to China and imposed a travel ban on them. Bloomberg analyzed the case as "a replay of the Didi Chuxing incident, China's answer to Uber, which was blocked by Chinese authorities from listing on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021 over security data leakage concerns."
