On October 8, Manus parent company Butterfly Effect announced it had completed a new funding round of more than $500 million. Boyu Capital and IDG Capital led the round, while existing shareholders Tencent, HSG (formerly Sequoia China) and ZhenFund made follow-on investments, the company said in a WeChat post.
The company did not disclose a valuation. Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal had reported last month that Manus was seeking roughly $500 million at a valuation of about $4 billion — nearly double the roughly $2 billion Meta had agreed to pay before that deal was unwound. That figure was a reported fundraising target during talks, not a confirmed valuation for the completed round.
The financing is Butterfly Effect's first major round since Manus resumed independent operations on September 1, after Chinese regulators required the parties to withdraw from Meta's planned acquisition.
Manus has moved quickly since returning to independence. On September 28, it released Manus 2.0 to overseas users and introduced Cue, a standalone personal-agent app for everyday tasks. The company also said it is assembling a team to build a product for the Chinese market and working with domestic model developers and ecosystem partners.
On the day the funding was announced, Manus listed 17 open positions covering product, engineering and operations, all based in Beijing, according to the company and Chinese media reports. Founder Xiao Hong said the company received more than a thousand résumés within a day.
Google Cloud enters the enterprise agent race
Also on October 8, Google Cloud used its Gemini at Work 2026 event to launch Gemini Agent, positioned as a "universal agent for work." Users describe a goal in natural language, and the agent plans the work, calls enterprise data and tools, writes and runs code, and returns finished documents, emails or results.
Gemini Agent is currently available only to enterprise customers in private preview. Google Cloud has not announced general availability dates or pricing, meaning the launch reflects a product direction rather than a proven enterprise payoff.
The agent is designed to run in the cloud and maintain context across devices, so tasks can continue for hours or days without user supervision. Google Cloud said it can also coordinate sub-agents for larger jobs and operate as a "coworker agent" with its own identity, email address and permissions within an organization.
A central technical feature is a four-part memory system: session memory for current-task context, semantic memory for enterprise knowledge and business definitions, procedural memory for reusable workflows, and episodic memory for records of past tasks. Separately, Google Cloud said Gemini Agent can dynamically choose between its own Gemini models and Anthropic's Claude, with more closed- and open-source models planned.
The company said smart routing could cut combined task costs to about one-third of using frontier models everywhere, while improving execution speed by 40%. Those figures come from Google Cloud's own claims and have not been independently verified.
There is also a discrepancy in Google's own messaging. The launch presentation described routing between Gemini and Claude as usable "today," while the FAQ said Gemini is available now and other models are "coming soon." The mismatch means multi-model routing should be treated as a capability still awaiting verification rather than a fully shipped feature.
A cheaper Haiku arrives as model costs keep falling
Anthropic launched Claude Haiku 5.5 on October 8, saying average running costs are about 75% lower than the previous Haiku 4.5. Anthropic positioned the model for coding and high-frequency sub-agent tasks, and said it can act as a sub-agent for Opus and Sonnet 5.5 work.
The release fits the broader industry pattern visible in both announcements: companies are competing less on raw model strength alone and more on agents that execute whole tasks, with cost controls and enterprise governance becoming part of the product.
What is confirmed and what is not
Confirmed: Butterfly Effect raised more than $500 million, led by Boyu Capital and IDG Capital with follow-ons from Tencent, HSG and ZhenFund; Manus 2.0 and Cue launched overseas on September 28; Google Cloud announced Gemini Agent on October 8 in private enterprise preview; Anthropic released Claude Haiku 5.5 with a claimed cost reduction of roughly 75%.
Unknown: the valuation of Manus's completed round and how the new capital will be used; pricing and availability dates for Gemini Agent; whether multi-model routing to Claude works today as described on stage; and how either agent performs at scale outside controlled previews.
Awaited: official valuation or use-of-proceeds details from Butterfly Effect, Gemini Agent pricing and general availability, and independent verification of Google's routing and cost claims.