China’s AI Agent Manus was trending on the Chinese social media platform Weibo on March 6. Manus, according to its team is an autonomous AI agent that can handle complex tasks beyond the traditional AI assistants. It delivers complete task results. A four-minute demonstration demonstrated its capabilities, which included screening resumes as if it were a human intern. Manus achieved state of the art (SOTA), results in GAIA benchmark testing. This could be the first AI product to mark the beginning of China’s AI agent era.
What it means: Manus reflects a growing interest in AI assistants capable of performing complex tasks independently, a shift away from traditional AI assistants which primarily provide answers or suggestions.
Details
- Manus was developed by a group led by entrepreneur Xiao Hong and has received significant attention in Chinese social media. It is different from conventional AI assistants in that it completes tasks autonomously rather than just making recommendations.
- This product achieved state-of-the art (SOTA), across all three difficulty level of the GAIA benchmark. The benchmark evaluates AI assistants ability to solve real world problems.
- Manus is still in beta testing. Users must apply to gain access. Invite codes are being resold for up to RMB 100 000 ($13,900) on secondary markets.
- According to the company, there are no official paid channels available for obtaining invite code.
Context : China’s AI sector is experiencing increased competition in AI agent developments, with companies trying to push beyond the traditional chatbot functionality. Manus’s emergence follows that of DeepSeek – another domestic AI model which recently gained significant traction. OpenAI’s announcement that it will charge $20,000 per month for an enterprise-grade AI Agent signals a growing commercial interest in AI.
- Xiao Hong is the founder of Manus. She launched AI assistant Monica in 2013, which integrated multiple large language modeling (LLMs). It was initially popular on overseas markets. In February, a Chinese version of Monica with real-time search and deep reasoning capabilities entered beta testing. Shuang is a Shanghai based tech reporter for Technode.com. She covers AI, tech companies, ecommerce and retail. Find her via e-mail: shuang.jing@technode.com. More by Shuang jing
