when Meta The social media giant, which reportedly agreed to spend $2 billion on Manus late last year, said it plans to adopt the startup’s subscription AI agent service and “expand it to even more companies.”
But some of Manas’ existing customers are not happy with the deal and say they plan to go elsewhere, the latest sign of skepticism about Meta as it attempts to compete with the likes of OpenAI. google and Anthropic in the rapidly growing artificial intelligence market.
Manus, a developer of general-purpose AI agents, was founded in China in 2022 and later relocated to Singapore. Last year, the company launched the first general-purpose AI agent that can be customized to perform complex tasks such as market research, coding, and data analysis.
Seth Dobrin, co-founder and CEO of Arya Labs, said Manus is his favorite agent AI platform, but his company, which develops a type of so-called world model, is no longer using Manus under Meta’s ownership. Doblin told CNBC that while he has confidence in Manus’ transparent terms and conditions, he doesn’t have the same confidence in Mehta and is “obviously saddened that this happened.”
“I disagree with many of Meta’s data practices and the way they essentially weaponize people’s personal data,” said Doblin, who helped launch Arya last year. “I don’t want to work with companies that have concerns about how they use data.”
Meta, which derives nearly all of its $200 billion in annual revenue from advertising, said on December 29 that the acquisition of Manus is aimed at accelerating enterprise AI innovation and integrating advanced automation into consumer and enterprise products, including the Meta AI assistant.
In a blog post on the day of the deal, Manas said the company reached millions of paying customers and had a revenue run rate of more than $125 million.
“Our first priority is to ensure that this change is not disruptive to our customers,” Manas said. “We will continue to sell and operate our product subscription services through our app and website. The company will continue to operate from Singapore.”
Despite these assurances, Doblin is not alone in his concerns.
Karl Yeh, co-founder of 0260.AI, a consulting firm that advises startups on how to integrate AI tools, said his company has stopped using Manas and has advised its clients to follow suit.
“Does Meta’s data policy apply to Manus? I think ultimately it will,” Yeh told CNBC. “That was the concern we had and the reason we stopped recommending it to our customers.”
“We don’t know where Manus fits into Meta’s AI roadmap,” Yeh said. “We don’t know if Manas will remain a separate company going forward, even if they say they will.”
Yeh said he is “not at all sure about Meta” and plans to move to a startup called Genspark or another service with more certainty.
Meta had no comments other than to mention the blog post, which said he was “excited to welcome the Manus team and improve the lives of billions of people and millions of businesses with their technology.”
looking for direction
Meta is hell-bent on winning in the AI space, most notably spending more than $14 billion in June to hire Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang and a handful of top engineers and researchers and secure a stake in his startup. But unlike AI model leaders OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, Meta has yet to establish a long-term strategy in the market, especially when competing within the enterprise.
Meta’s stock price has fallen 17% since CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on the company’s last earnings call in October that AI costs would continue to rise. Analysts predict that spending on AI could exceed $100 billion in 2026. Meta is scheduled to announce its fourth quarter results next week.
Flo Crivello, CEO of Manas competitor Lindy, said the company initially saw a spike in user numbers following news of the Meta acquisition.
“We think there was a kind of halo effect with this announcement,” Crivello said. “Awareness of this category of software grew and people started researching it.”
Mr. Crivello previously spent about five years with the company. Uber He said he believes Meta’s rationale is not to bring in enterprise customers, but rather to focus on serving small and medium-sized businesses, which have long been important to Meta’s advertising revenue.
Crivello said Manus is “focused on very small business owners, such as independent contractors,” and said it could be a while before Meta figures out where it takes Manus going forward.
“The way these companies think about these acquisitions is that they’re buying companies for specific strategic reasons. They just don’t know exactly what the integration is going to look like yet,” Crivello said. “They cut a check, add something new to the chessboard and then figure it out. And sometimes it takes years to figure out what to do.”
Beyond advertising, Meta is struggling in several areas that are trying to crack the company. The company announced it would shut down its Workplace communications and productivity platform in 2024, two years after discontinuing sales of its Portal video calling device.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms, demonstrates Meta Quest Pro at the virtual Meta Connect event in New York on October 11, 2022.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Last week, Meta announced it was discontinuing its virtual reality app, Workroom, as part of a broader shift away from VR, which was Zuckerberg’s main focus even before AI became popular.
Navrina Singh, founder and CEO of governance startup Credo AI, said she doubts Fortune 500 companies are adopting Meta’s tools.
“In large enterprises, especially in highly regulated sectors such as healthcare and financial services, many of today’s AI deployments are built on models from providers like OpenAI and Anthropic,” said Singh. It is then typically run through cloud platforms operated by: microsoft or Amazon“if trust, security and accountability requirements are well established and prioritized,” she said.
One area where Meta has found success in the business world is with the messaging platform WhatsApp, which it acquired in 2014 for $19 billion. WhatsApp for Business has become a popular way for businesses to communicate with their customers. Evercore analyst Mark Mahaney predicts that WhatsApp could generate $40 billion in revenue by 2030.
“Business messaging remains a significant opportunity for us,” Meta Chief Financial Officer Susan Lee said during the company’s final earnings call. “Our business AI efforts are also well underway, with a focus on building turnkey AI to help companies capture leads and grow sales.”
Spotlight: Meta brings ads to WhatsApp
