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OpenAI, Meta, and Apple’s latest battle: Breaking your phone addiction

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The average American picks up their phone more than 200 times a day. Teens are pinged with some 250 notifications a day — during school, after school, and overnight. The apps meant to prevent you from checking apps have done little to stop the problem. Now, some of the tech companies that helped create our screen dependence are trying to disrupt it.

Later this year, OpenAI plans to debut a small, screenless device that Sam Altman describes as more “peaceful” than a smartphone. Apple, the Oz of screentime, is developing smart glasses, a pin, and AirPods with more AI built in, according to a Tuesday report from Bloomberg, with the rumored pendants featuring microphones and cameras to be the “eyes and ears” of the iPhone. Meta has teased its fully augmented reality Orion glasses since 2024. While that device doesn’t have a release date, the company last year sold some 7 million pairs of its smart glasses, which is the start of the post-smartphone future Mark Zuckerberg has predicted. Eventual smart specs could be more screen all-the-time than screenless, but they also rely on AI to make the experience much more hands-free than swiping and scrolling on a phone.

Could AI be what finally breaks our phone addiction?

Since 2007, no device out of Silicon Valley has captured universal imagination the way Steve Jobs did when he put your iPod, your phone, and the internet together on a 3.5-inch screen. Competitors have tried for a decade-plus to get people to shift us from the iPhone to smart glasses, and largely failed. The awe around smartphones has turned to derision, as excessive screen time is linked to disrupted sleep, anxiety, and fractured attention. Now, developers are hoping the AI boom can give us the next big thing.

Beating the smartphone would mean replacing a device that 91% of American adults now carry — a device for which millions of apps have been developed and people now depend on in lieu of wallets and cameras and health monitors. New AI devices can’t just copy what smartphones do, says Ramon Llamas, a research director at a technology intelligence firm IDC: They have to show they have a solution to an everyday problem. If they don’t, Llama says, “these things are just gonna really end up as solutions looking for a problem to solve.”

Critiques of screen time can be as blunt and smoothbrained as what the critics say excessive screen time makes you. A seven-hour daily log may seem like a staggering amount of dependence, but what did the person spend those seven hours doing? Doomscrolling late into the night, or FaceTiming with a far-away friend? With AI wearables, there’s the risk of becoming dependent on the device for different reasons.

“The screen may not be there, but what’s getting filled in the back is already this problem of AI companionship,” says Olivia Gambelin, an AI ethicist and author of the book “Responsible AI.” An AI device designed to do something very specific — like listen to a meeting and then send follow-up emails or messages related to action points discussed — could save people time and keep them from writing tedious emails and Slack messages from their desk. But that same device listening in to personal conversations with family and friends could compromise a relationship, and erode the positive effects that texting a friend to check-in can have on both people (already, my friends are tiring of AI summaries on the iPhone that summarize our group text and become an intermediary into our threads of gossip and jokes in the name of efficiency). Wearing microphones and cameras to social interactions and into businesses is likely to really weird out some of the people around you. More people are entering into romantic, dependent relationships with AI companions, and a swell of loud dissenters are criticizing the technology for taking jobs and attempting to replicate human relationships.

But OpenAI is betting that it can package its technology in a device in a way that calms the user. “When I use current devices or most applications, I feel like I am walking through Times Square in New York and constantly just dealing with all the little indignities along the way,” Altman said in November. OpenAI’s device, he said, would be less Time Square, more “sitting in the most beautiful cabin by a lake and in the mountains and sort of just enjoying the peace and calm.” That’s because the AI device would learn “contextual awareness of your whole life,” and when best to send you alerts.

The screen itself may not be the problem; it’s what’s summoning us to the screen.

Other AI wearables have failed by falling short of that goal. Humane AI sold a wearable pin, priced at $700 plus a monthly fee to connect it, but pulled it from the market a year ago. It failed perhaps because it tried too hard to replace our phones — it didn’t interact with them, but provided a shoddy replacement. Novelty wasn’t a factor that could outshine usability. The AI Friend pendant, which can’t search the internet or help with tasks outside of sending reminders and acts instead as an eavesdropping sycophant around its user’s neck, was mocked relentlessly and sold just a few thousand devices after it hit the market last year.

Companies trying to make AI hardware should focus on “transformative features,” Jason Low, research director at Omdia, tells me in an email. AI wearables must be more than “marginally more convenient,” should integrate with our existing products, and have a clear, stated value. For example, glasses that provide real-time language translation or devices for fitness and health tracking offer features our smartphones can’t do as well. The Oura ring continues to grow in popularity, particularly among women after starting out as a niche tech bro buy, for the novel insights it can offer; the company announced last fall it has sold 5.5 million rings since 2015, with more than 2.5 million sold between June 2024 and September 2025. “These devices often deliver a more polished user experience compared to general-purpose, do-it-all AI devices,” Low says.

Llamas tells me that the AI functions of a wearable have to be “contextual, personalized, and actionable,” like reminding the wearer to send birthday flowers or responding accurately to being asked to direct the user to the nearest Starbucks. A first attempt device shouldn’t try to replace the smartphone, but to integrate with the Apple or Google ecosystems, he says. Apple and OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment about their rumored products for this story.

If anything has hyped Silicon Valley like the iPhone, it’s been AI. But three years after the mainstream adoption of ChatGPT, the value generative AI in the white collar workforce has yet to be fully realized. That could make a product for consumers a hard sell, too. “Some of the overwhelm that’s coming with AI that I see in general users is you can use it for everything, or it’s promoted that way, which is actually quite stifling,” Gambelin says.

In our quest to find a peaceful equilibrium with tech, the screen itself may not be the problem; it’s what’s summoning us to the screen. Its bright colors, games, and infinite scroll give quick dopamine hits that entice us to stay glued to it. But much of what pings my phone throughout the day are useless notifications trying to get me to reopen one of the dozens of apps — a markdown moment on a clothing thrifting app, a like on the Instagram story I’ve posted of my dog from my best friend, and ironically, a report of how much time I’ve already logged. There’s a relentless business model at play to keep us on these apps. No screens would mean no infinite scroll through TikTok, no Candy Crush — but app developers and companies may need to find new ways to reach people if wearables caught on, and an always-there AI device and companion might not be as peaceful as Altman describes. Our collective screen time is a problem, but the AI wearable will have to surprise us all with something novel to be useful.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

Business Insider’s Discourse stories provide perspectives on the day’s most pressing issues, informed by analysis, reporting, and expertise.




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Jacob Zinkula

A Gen Zer took a 6-figure job at Meta to rebuild her savings. Then she quit and returned to her dream.

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When Alyson Isaacs joined Meta in 2022, she only had about $200 in her savings account. A six-figure salary offered a chance to rebuild her finances, but her ultimate goal lay outside Big Tech.

After college, Isaacs “completely drained” her savings on a startup she’d co-founded, and found herself grappling with her next career move. After weighing her options, she decided to follow the advice of a mentor: go to “startup rehab” — in other words, take a full-time job.

“You can always get a job at a Big Tech company,'” said Isaacs, who’s 28 and lives in San Francisco.

About four months later, she landed a product manager role at Meta in the company’s Quest for Business virtual reality division. But her entrepreneurial itch never left, and she eventually began mapping out the best path back into the startup world.

“There are ways you can be entrepreneurial,” she said of working at Big Tech, “but it’s very much not the same.”

Over the past year, I’ve interviewed more than a dozen workers who, like Isaacs, chose to quit their jobs at major employers — in some cases without another role lined up. While some eventually landed at another large company, others stepped away from the corporate world entirely — joining a smaller business, launching their own venture, pursuing a career pivot, or focusing on personal priorities like parenting.

They’ve become outliers in an economy where workers are quitting at one of the lowest rates in the past decade — a trend driven by a hiring slowdown that’s left some clinging to their jobs with few appealing alternatives. Those who have called it quits told me they did so for a mix of reasons: concerns about job security, shifts in workplace culture, entrepreneurial ambitions, or a desire for more meaningful work. In short, they wanted greater long-term agency over their careers.

Isaacs shared how she decided to take the leap back into entrepreneurship — and offered advice for others facing a similar career crossroads.

Preparing for a return to entrepreneurship

After leaving her post-college startup, Isaacs took a month to reset. She then spent two months interviewing at smaller companies to fine-tune her résumé and sharpen her interview skills. Eventually, she applied for a role at Meta and landed the job. She moved from the Berkeley area to San Francisco and started in May 2022 — about a year after graduation.

While Isaacs didn’t have firm plans to return to entrepreneurship, she knew that if she ever went down that path again, she’d need to be financially prepared for life without a steady paycheck. So she started living well below her means, including living in a less expensive area, going to a basic gym, cooking at home, and avoiding shopping sprees.

“I saved so hard because I knew that this wasn’t going to be the end game for me, and I wanted to start my own thing again eventually,” she said.

Isaacs also prepared for a potential return to entrepreneurship by spending about five hours a week angel investing, which involved scouting and backing startups. After about a year of saving, she began making a few investments, each under $10,000. She said the experience helped her build a network in San Francisco’s startup scene and spot gaps other entrepreneurs could exploit — insights that helped shape her own business ideas.

The final phase of Isaacs’ preparation was soaking up everything she could from her time at Meta, including transitioning to a product manager position at Instagram — one of Meta’s subsidiaries — in 2024. She said the roles gave her knowledge and experience that entrepreneurship alone couldn’t provide.

“Traditional entrepreneurship was just flying by the edge of my seat and seeing what worked,” she said. “But I needed that level of expertise to go farther in my career.”

The question was when to make the leap and leave Meta. Isaacs said the death of her father in 2024 weighed heavily on her thought process.

“That really triggered this thought in my brain of, ‘Is being a product manager at a Big Tech company what I want to do for the rest of my life?'” she said. “And the answer was resoundingly no — I wanted to do something on my own and prove myself.”

By mid-2025, Isaacs found herself thinking more and more about a startup idea in the consumer AI space — and struggling to focus on her job at Meta. On July 1, she resigned; the next day, she began working full-time on her startup, which she described as an “agentic AI solution for personal wellness.” The company is currently in stealth, meaning the team isn’t publicly sharing full details while the product is still in development. She said she and her two co-founders are testing the product with users and plan to open a pre-seed funding round in the spring.

Read more about people who’ve found themselves at a corporate crossroads

Advice for others weighing big career moves

Isaacs said she knows many people might hesitate to give up a Big Tech job. But she believes some underestimate their chances of finding a new role or building something themselves — and end up stuck in jobs they don’t enjoy.

“It’s kind of like dating,” she said, adding that if you anticipate a bad dating pool, “you’re going to stay with your bad ex.”

Isaacs said she wasn’t worried about resigning from Meta, in part because she’s a “super optimist” about her career. If her startup doesn’t work out, she’s confident in her backup plan — the same one she relied on after her post-college startup opportunity fell through.

“Leaving Meta wasn’t scary for me because I was like, ‘I can always get another job in Big Tech,'” she said.

Isaacs has a few pieces of advice for other aspiring entrepreneurs. She recommends connecting with as many people as possible who are relevant to the venture you want to pursue — and looking for ways to help them, whether through angel investing, advising, or offering support.

“You kind of create this flywheel of people helping you if you help other people first,” she said.

Additionally, even if your end goal is to build a business, Isaacs said having experience at a big-name company can give you valuable credibility as an entrepreneur.

“I needed to be undeniable as a founder, and having a big-box name brand on your résumé gives you that undeniability,” she said.




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Katie Notopoulos

Meta is considering bringing facial recognition to Ray-Bans. It thinks we’re too distracted to notice.

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Since Meta’s Ray-Ban Smart Glasses launched in 2021, there’s always been a lingering, controversial question about whether they could be used for facial recognition.

The question has surfaced again more recently, according to a New York Times report on Friday. And this time, the story says, there’s a reason the company thinks it could add facial recognition without kicking up too much of a fuss: because we’re all busy worried about so many other things going on in the world.

It’s not clear whether Meta will follow through on the plans. “While we frequently hear about the interest in this type of feature — and some products already exist in the market — we’re still thinking through options and will take a thoughtful approach if and before we roll anything out,” Erin Logan, a Meta spokesperson, told Business Insider in a statement.

Since their launch, the Meta Ray-Ban glasses have been a surprise hit, with Ray-Ban owner EssilorLuxottica saying it tripled sales in 2025 and is struggling to keep up with demand.

In 2024, some Harvard students rigged Meta Ray-Bans to perform facial recognition by sending camera photos to a third-party service for scanning. At the time, Meta was adamant that people understand the glasses themselves weren’t performing facial recognition, and that this wasn’t a capability of the device itself. Which was true, but a truth somewhat orthogonal to the public horror about the idea of people using facial recognition glasses in public.

Thus far, legal and privacy issues surrounding facial recognition, not technical limitations, have kept the feature at bay. So what’s changed?

The New York Times viewed a document that gives us a clue:

Meta’s internal memo said the political tumult in the United States was good timing for the feature’s release.
“We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,” according to the document from Meta’s Reality Labs, which works on hardware including smart glasses.

This is straight out of the playbook for a celebrity announcing their divorce during the Super Bowl to minimize attention. Basically, at least one person at Meta was apparently considering the fact that — waves hands — so many other horrors are going on in the world that people will be too distracted to focus on this.

And what, exactly, might this unnamed Meta person be assuming are the “other concerns” keeping civil society groups’ resources focused? I have some ideas:

Frankly, any of these is a big enough distraction to keep me from complaining about facial-recognition glasses!




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Meta says it won’t chop the bottom 5% performers this year

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  • Meta denies plans for new performance-based layoffs amid online speculation.
  • Meta previously considered annual job cuts based on performance to manage low performers.
  • Meta recently cut 10% of its Reality Labs division, affecting over 1,000 employees.

Meta says it will not have a fresh round of performance-based layoffs, even as a smattering of online chatter has raised questions about whether the social media giant will quietly restart its performance-driven purge.

“These are individual cases not related to any company wide initiatives,” a Meta spokesperson told Business Insider when asked about a recent restructuring. “For example we are not doing any 5% low performers like we did last year.”

That’s a notable shift in tone from early 2025, when Business Insider reported that an internal FAQ circulating at Meta suggested performance-based job cuts could become an annual practice, with the company saying it “may use future performance cycles” to move out its lowest performers. Early last year, Meta cut 5% of its workforce, saying it was focusing on its lowest performers.

The clarification also comes as Meta continues to reshape other parts of the business. Last month, the company cut about 10% of its Reality Labs division, a move that affected over 1,000 employees.

Have a tip? Contact Pranav Dixit via email at pranavdixit@protonmail.com or Signal at 1-408-905-9124. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.




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Bill Ackman attends 2025 Pershing Square Foundation MIND and Cancer Prize Award Dinner at The Pool on May 22, 2025 in New York.

Bill Ackman’s hedge fund reveals big stake in Meta — ‘one of the clearest beneficiaries of AI integration’

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  • Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square has invested roughly 10% of its capital in Meta.
  • The fund told investors Meta is set to be “one of the clearest beneficiaries of AI integration.”
  • Meta has been plowing cash into data center projects, which Ackman’s firm expect to pay off long-term.

Bill Ackman is betting big on Meta — saying it believes it to be “one of the clearest beneficiaries of AI integration.”

The billionaire investor’s Pershing Square hedge fund revealed Wednesday that it has invested around 10% of its capital in Meta, or approximately $2 billion, as of the end of December.

“We believe Meta’s current share price underappreciates the company’s long-term upside potential from AI and represents a deeply discounted valuation for one of the world’s greatest businesses,” the presentation said.

At around $668 per share on Wednesday afternoon, Meta’s stock price is roughly flat in 2026 so far, and down approximately 7% from one year ago.

Pershing Square also revealed it had allocated 13% of its fund to Amazon as of the end of 2025, and a 2% position in Hertz in late 2024.

Wall Street has been less than enthusiastic about some of Big Tech’s planned capital expenditure plans, but Meta’s budget-busting $135 billion forecasted spend was rewarded last month with a short-lived 8% bump the share price.

Either way, Ackman’s team says they’re very much on board with the strategy.

“We believe concerns around META’s AI-related spending initiatives are underestimating the company’s long-term upside potential from AI,” the presentation said.


Pershing's Meta investment thesis

Pershing Square’s investment thesis for its stake in Meta.

Pershing Square



The presentation also said Meta’s 3.5 billion users are increasing at a steady clip, setting the company up as the “dominant” leader in digital ads.

“Meta’s business model is one of the clearest beneficiaries of AI integration,” the presentation said.




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ICE arrested 2 truck drivers heading to a major Meta data center project

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  • ICE arrested two drivers on Wednesday near a Meta construction project in Louisiana, officials said.
  • The individuals were detained during a traffic stop inspection of vehicles heading to the site.
  • “ICE did not enter the Meta site at any time,” the local sheriff’s office said.

Meta’s new mega data center project had a brush with immigration authorities.

The Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana’s Richland Parish, where the massive Hyperion Data Center is under construction, said Wednesday that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained two dump truck drivers traveling to the site during a traffic stop inspection.

“During those stops, two drivers were arrested by ICE due to their immigration status,” the office said. The drivers were from Guatemala and Honduras.

“ICE did not enter the Meta site at any time,” the office said.

In a statement to Business Insider late Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security said that ICE did not target a Meta data center in Louisiana.

The DHS spokesperson said that the ICE agents had carried out a “targeted operation” to arrest the truck driver from Honduras, and had encountered another driver from Guatemala. It said both were arrested and are in ICE custody.

Meta declined to comment to Business Insider.

The Meta project is the largest of several multi-gigawatt data centers that CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said will come online as the company races to catch up on AI computing capacity.

Wednesday’s arrests crystallize an issue that companies have increasingly had to grapple with over the past year: how to prepare workers for an ICE encounter, whether on or off company property.

The action also follows a recent surge of ICE activity in cities and towns across the US, which has met some resistance in Democratic-led states.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry has been a prominent supporter of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. The state is receiving nearly $1 million a month to house detainees at its Angola prison, Axios reported, citing public records.

January 15, 11.25 p.m. E.T. — This story was updated to include comments from a DHS spokesperson.




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The list of companies laying off staff this year includes Citi and Angi, with dozens of others like Meta warning of job cuts

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The year 2026 is just getting started, and layoffs are already underway.

Companies, including Angi, the company formerly known as Angie’s List, and the popular web tool Tailwind, have cut staff, citing the impact of artificial intelligence among the reasons for the layoffs.

More than 100 other companies, from Amazon to Nike to Verizon, have filed legally mandated WARN notices about job cuts to come in 2026, according to WARN Tracker. Some of the cuts are part of previously announced reductions.

This year’s cuts follow three years of significant workforce reductions across a broad range of industries, including tech, media, finance, and retail.

The moves come as artificial intelligence, public policy, and broader economic conditions present sweeping changes to the business landscape.

A World Economic Forum survey last year found that some 41% of companies worldwide expected to reduce their workforces in the next five years because of the rise of artificial intelligence. The survey also found that jobs in big data, fintech, and AI are expected to double by 2030.

Last year, Business Insider tracked layoffs at around 65 major companies, such as Amazon, Meta, Paramount, and Starbucks. In 2026, we’ll continue to track additional job cuts based on company announcements, WARN notices, and our own reporting.

Here are the companies with job cuts underway in 2026, listed in alphabetical order.

Angi is cutting 350 jobs

Angi, a contractor listing platform, was previously known as Angie’s List.

Donald King/AP

Angi, the popular contractor listing site once known as Angie’s List, said in January that it was cutting around 350 jobs “to reduce operating expenses and optimize the organizational structure in support of long-term growth.” The company also said it’s making the cuts “in light of AI-driven efficiency improvements.”

In a January 7 SEC filing, Angi said that the cuts would save between $70 million and $80 million in annual spending. The layoffs will cost the company between $22 million and $30 million, according to the filing.

Citi’s job cuts continue this year


Citibank logo

Citibank said it will continue to cut jobs in 2026.

Kevin Carter/Getty Images

Citi will cut more jobs this year as part of its plan to reduce its workforce by 10%, or 20,000 employees.

In a statement on January 13, the bank said that it will continue to reduce head count in 2026.

“These changes reflect adjustments we’re making to ensure our staffing levels, locations and expertise align with current business needs,” a spokesperson for Citi said.

The plan was detailed in the company’s January 2024 earnings report and could save the bank as much as $2.5 billion.

Meta is preparing for layoffs


The Meta Quest 3s, the standalone virtual reality headset developed by Reality Labs, a subdivision of the American company Meta Platforms, is exhibited at the Qualcomm pavilion during the Mobile World Congress 2025 in Barcelona, Spain, on March 5, 2025. (Photo by Joan Cros/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Meta is preparing to slash jobs within its Reality Labs division as the branch’s cash burn continues.

Joan Cros/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Meta is preparing to slash jobs within its Reality Labs division, the unit responsible for Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse ambitions, three people familiar with the matter told Business Insider.

Two employees said that teams working on virtual reality headsets and Horizon Worlds, the company’s VR social network, will be disproportionately affected. The New York Times reported that roughly 10% to 15% of the division’s 15,000 employees are expected to be laid off, with announcements coming as soon as this week.

The cuts coincide with a high-stakes division-wide meeting scheduled for Wednesday. Meta’s CTO and Reality Labs chief Andrew Bosworth described the upcoming gathering as the “most important” of the year and urged employees to attend in person.

Tailwind cut 3 of its 4 engineers

Tailwind, a popular web tool, said it cut three of its four engineers in January, citing an AI-driven decline in revenue.

“75% of the people on our engineering team lost their jobs here yesterday because of the brutal impact AI has had on our business,” CEO Adam Wathan wrote in a GitHub comment on January 6 that made waves in the tech community.

Is your company conducting layoffs? Got a tip?


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Meta plans layoffs in its Reality Labs unit

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  • Meta plans layoffs in Reality Labs, affecting the teams behind VR headsets and Horizon Worlds.
  • The restructuring follows major financial losses and a strategic shift toward AI.
  • Reality Labs faces uncertainty as Meta leadership emphasizes 2025 as a decisive year for the unit.

Meta is preparing layoffs in its Reality Labs division, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke with Business Insider.

The teams working on the company’s virtual reality headsets and Horizon Worlds, its VR-based social network, will be disproportionately affected, two employees said.

Roughly 10% to 15% of Reality Labs’ 15,000 employees are expected to be laid off, with the cuts set to be announced this week, The New York Times reported.

Meta declined to comment.

The move comes as Meta CTO and Reality Labs chief Andrew Bosworth has called a key division-wide meeting for Wednesday, describing it as the “most important” of the year and urging employees to show up in person, Business Insider previously reported.

Reality Labs has been a costly bet for Meta, racking up more than $70 billion in losses since 2020. It has faced repeated rounds of cuts as Meta shifts its attention — and spending — toward AI.

In a memo obtained by Business Insider last year, Bosworth called 2025 “the most critical” year of his tenure and warned the outcome would determine whether Reality Labs is remembered as visionary work or “a legendary misadventure.”

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What is Manus, the Chinese-founded AI startup Meta is buying for over $2 billion?

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Manus is back in the spotlight.

The Chinese-founded artificial intelligence startup is being acquired by Meta in a deal reported to be worth more than $2 billion — one of the most high-profile instances of a US tech giant buying an Asian AI company.

Manus grabbed headlines in March when it unveiled an AI agent designed to autonomously execute tasks like résumé screening and stock analysis.

The startup was founded in China and moved its headquarters to Singapore in mid-2025.

What does Manus do?

Launched in March by the Chinese AI product studio Butterfly Effect, Manus has been pitched by its creators as the world’s first “general” AI agent — a system designed to carry out tasks independently.

Since its launch, the startup has continued to expand what the agent can do, rolling out features that allow users to use Manus for design work, slide creation, and completing tasks directly through a web browser.

Manus can independently execute complex tasks, such as market research, coding, and data analysis, Meta said when it announced the acquisition on Monday.

Business Insider tested the tool in its early stages in March and found it ambitious but uneven in execution, including instances where it hallucinated data.

Earlier this month, Manus said it had surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue, with its total revenue run rate — including usage-based fees and other income streams — exceeding $125 million.

The company in April raised $75 million in funding led by Benchmark, at a valuation of about $500 million, Bloomberg reported. Manus said in an update this month that it now employs about 105 people across Singapore, Tokyo, and San Francisco, and plans to open a Paris office soon.

Who are its founders?

Manus was founded by Xiao Hong, a Chinese entrepreneur and software engineer who is also the CEO of Butterfly Effect.

Known as “Red” in China’s tech circles, Xiao was born in 1992 and studied software engineering at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in central China.

After graduating, Xiao founded Nightingale Technology in 2015, where he developed enterprise productivity tools, including the Yi Ban assistant for WeChat, which gained millions of users in China.

In 2022, he launched Butterfly Effect and rolled out Monica, an AI-powered browser extension that aggregates multiple large language models. Following the acquisition, Xiao will take on a vice president role at Meta.

Xiao was joined at Manus by co-founder Ji Yichao, also known as “Peak Ji,” who was chief scientist at Butterfly Effect. Ji leads technical and infrastructure development at Manus.

The 32-year-old Ji was the public face of Manus at launch, introducing the AI agent in its debut video in March. Ji has a long track record of building consumer technology products, and was named to MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35 list this year.

The founding team also includes Zhang Tao, who leads product at Manus. He was head of global product at ByteDance from 2022 to 2023 and has held multiple product roles, including serving as a product manager at Tencent, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Why did Meta buy Manus?

Meta said the acquisition is part of its effort to scale general-purpose AI agents across its apps and services.

The company said in its announcement on Monday that it plans to keep Manus running as a stand-alone product while integrating its technology into Meta’s wider AI offerings.

Manus said the deal would not be disruptive for its customers and that it would continue to sell and operate its subscription service. The company will also continue to operate from Singapore.

“Joining Meta allows us to build on a stronger, more sustainable foundation without changing how Manus works or how decisions are made,” said Xiao.

Buying Manus could give Meta an AI revenue boost and give it a distribution advantage, Business Insider’s Hugh Langley wrote.

What about Manus’ ties to China?

Manus’s links to China have drawn scrutiny.

In May, Sen. John Cornyn questioned US investment in Manus in a post on X. He asked whether American capital should back AI companies with ties to China as competition with Beijing intensifies.

In a statement to Business Insider on Tuesday, a Meta spokesperson said the deal would fully sever Manus’s remaining ties to China.

“There will be no continuing Chinese ownership interests in Manus AI following the transaction, and Manus AI will discontinue its services and operations in China,” the spokesperson told Business Insider. This includes shutting down the AI assistant, Monica, and relocating relevant employees.

Manus employees who join Meta will not have access to customer data, and Meta will continue to geo-block access to its AI models, the spokesperson added.




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3 reasons buying Manus could give Meta a much-needed AI boost

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AI dealmaking isn’t slowing down — and it’s Meta’s turn again.

The social media giant is buying Manus, a Singapore-based artificial intelligence startup, the companies announced on Monday.

Manus went viral in March when it previewed an AI agent that could autonomously perform tasks like screening résumés and stock analysis. Manus was created in China but relocated to Singapore in mid-2025. Meta paid more than $2 billion for Manus, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The deal is the latest in a flurry of red-hot AI investment and acquisitions this year, which includes Meta’s $14 billion investment in Scale AI in June. From providing an instant AI revenue source to giving it a leg up in AI agents, here’s why buying Manus could give Meta a much-needed boost in the AI race.

1. It’s an instant revenue generator

Manus said in December that it had processed more than 147 trillion tokens of text and said its users were in the “millions.” It also claimed to have crossed $100 million in annual recurring revenue, achieving both milestones eight months after launch.

Those numbers tell us Meta is getting a startup with a built-in audience of paying users. Meta’s business model to date has largely revolved around building free products and making money from collecting user data and targeted advertising. Manus offers a free tier for basic tasks, but charges users up to $200 a month for its pro tier.

“The purchase gives Meta a functioning business with paying customers, meaningful revenue and infrastructure already proven at scale,” said Murthy Grandhi, company profiles analyst at research firm GlobalData, in a note.

In its announcement, Meta said it plans to continue selling the Manus service separately while also integrating Manus’s technology into its existing platforms, which include Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Meta did not elaborate on which ones or how it might do so. Meta has poured billions into building up its internal AI teams and developing what is termed “superintelligence,” with so far little in terms of returns. Manus could be a way for Meta to start making money directly from AI while it continues to build out its internal efforts.

2. Manus is a big bet on agents

Meta has struggled to wow consumers and developers as much as OpenAI and Google when it comes to raw model power. However, as these models become increasingly commoditized, there is a growing need to show AI can actually be useful. One such way is AI agents, a type of software that can proactively make decisions and take actions, such as creating a marketing campaign or monitoring and fixing bugs in apps.

Buying Manus could prove a smart bet on the idea that the real value will lie in the programs that sit on top of the models. Manus primarily uses other companies’ AI models, like Anthropic’s Claude, as building blocks and layers its own software on top.

“People keep assuming a small update from OpenAI or Google will wipe out a lot of AI startups,” wrote Yuchen Jin, CEO of the AI startup Hyperbolic, in an X post about Meta’s Manus deal. “But in reality, the AI application layer should be where most of the opportunity is.”

A Meta spokesperson did not immediately respond to a question about which models Manus would support following the acquisition.

3. Meta can use its distribution advantage

One of Meta’s strengths is that its platforms are used by billions of people, which, like Google, gives it a distribution advantage. Its challenge is to find ways to keep them coming back.

Unlike Google with Gemini 3, Meta has yet to have a buzzy AI breakthrough moment with its own in-house models. Combining Manus’s “general-purpose agents” with Meta’s distribution channels gives the social media company another shot at that, particularly as CEO Mark Zuckerberg has acknowledged that Facebook has shifted from being a place for friends to view each other’s content to a “broad discovery and entertainment space.”

“Manus offers a ready-made, high-margin software layer that can be sold directly and integrated across Meta’s consumer and enterprise products,” said GlobalData’s Grandhi.




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