Facebook Fight Shows Beijing Determined To Keep Chinese AI Out Of US

China's government has blocked Meta’s acquisition of a Chinese start-up’s artificial intelligence agent, demonstrating the lengths to which Beijing will go to keep its technology out of the U.S.'s hands. Manus created waves when it was released onto the market by its founders Xiao Hong and Ji Yichao last March. Unlike chatbots such as ChatGPT which require user prompts, Manus is supposed to function automatically to complete tasks with minimal human direction. It immediately attracted interest and within months had raised $75 million in a funding round led by a U.S. venture firm. It claimed to have gone from $0 to $100 million faster than any company. The company then shut its China offices, cut off most of its Chinese customers and moved headquarters and core staff to Singapore in July. Then six months later, the owner of Facebook and Instagram announced it was buying the firm for $2 billion. That's when Beijing's regulators jumped in. ...Beijing Pulls the Plug U.S. acquisitions of Chinese firms are rare. Silicon Valley has largely avoided buying Chinese start‑ups outright in recent years amid regulatory scrutiny, geopolitical tensions, and national security concerns. Those issues have come to the fore with the Meta-Manus purchase. When