Opinion | Manus leaving China reflects tough balancing act amid geopolitical tensions

Name: China shows off latest AI innovations at international conference in Shanghai
Uploaded: 2025-08-04T12:30:08.000Z
Duration: 3 min 16 s
Description: China shows off latest AI innovations at international conference in Shanghai

For successful start-ups like Manus, a relocation could be a pragmatic option that brings benefits in terms of resources and access

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Once a rising star in China’s AI scene, Manus has since relocated its headquarters to Singapore, quietly stepping out of the mainland spotlight just as Big Tech players from Tencent to ByteDance rush to fill the void. Photo: Shutterstock

Billy Huang

Published: 8:30pm, 4 Aug 2025

As Tencent unveiled a dozen artificial intelligence (AI) agents at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, one name was conspicuously absent: Manus.

Once a rising star in China’s AI scene, Manus has since relocated its headquarters to Singapore, quietly stepping out of the mainland spotlight just as Big Tech players from Tencent to ByteDance rush to fill the void. The timing is not coincidental.

Manus’ departure didn’t trigger fireworks, but it did mark a turning point. The company, now backed by US investors and operating abroad, had demonstrated early how general-purpose AI agents could perform complex tasks – writing reports, designing websites, coding apps – in minutes. Its success story also showed just how much room Chinese start-ups need to grow, as well as how hard that space can be to find at home.

At the Fortune Brainstorm AI conference last month in Singapore, where industry players discussed the future of artificial intelligence in a time of geopolitical realignment, one sentiment echoed: building globally now requires more than just a good product. It requires room to operate – across markets, borders and ideas.

Lyantoniette Chua of AI Safety Asia, one of the speakers at the conference, suggested Singapore might be the strategic choice. For companies such as Manus weighing their future, she said, it offers low-hanging fruit in the form of a pragmatic option when deciding whether to align with the United States or China feels increasingly uncertain.

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China shows off latest AI innovations at international conference in Shanghai

Here is why what Manus did matters. First, there is money. US venture capital has stopped flowing into Chinese AI start-ups. For early-stage companies that need large amounts of funding, that is fatal, even in Hong Kong. Nils Pihl, CEO of Auki AI, a robotics software firm that specialises in spatial computing and AI, said it clearly: “You can keep an office in Hong Kong, but to raise real funds, you need to be somewhere else.”

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.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}For successful start-ups like Manus, a relocation could be a pragmatic option that brings benefits in terms of resources and access

For successful start-ups like Manus, a relocation could be a pragmatic option that brings benefits in terms of resources and access