> After a $75 million fundraising round led by U.S. venture firm Benchmark in May 2025, Manus shut its China offices in July, laying off dozens of employees. It then moved its operations to Singapore.<p>> It was not immediately clear on what grounds China was seeking the annulment of a deal involving a Singapore-based company and how, if at all, a completed acquisition transaction would be unwound.<p>> Manus' two co-founders, CEO Xiao Hong and chief scientist Ji Yichao, were summoned to Beijing for talks with regulators in March and later barred from leaving the country, five sources familiar with the matter said.<p>Will be interesting to see how this plays out.
The third quote seems to invalidate the second, no? Under the "grounds" that key people are currently physically in China, and as such, the Chinese government can coerce them to do whatever it wants.<p>Though I suppose if those two did not have majority ownership of the company, the actual (former) majority owners can refuse to unwind the sale regardless of their wishes. Company might be worth quite a bit less to Meta without those key people, though. Either way, I assume the two people stuck in China won't be seeing a dime of that sale price, which is not cool.<p>(This is regardless of my feelings about Meta owning more AI capability...)
The co-founders have roots in China. As such it's already a done deal that China will get its way.
Dealt with is the founders / team / investors losing out of the $2B. That’s the punishment from China.
Somehow I think there is a real possibility more will happen.<p>Barring them from leaving the country feels a bit sinister for people who haven't been accused of committing any crimes.<p>I don't claim to know what's going on outside of what's being reported, but I'm reminded of other individuals who have "stepped out of line" (as determined by Beijing) and were also either barred from the country or mysteriously disappeared for weeks or months at a time only to randomly reappear at some point singing a different tune.
>>> Barring them from leaving the country feels a bit sinister for people who haven't been accused of committing any crimes.<p>This is standard operating procedure for the CCP. They are a truly ruthless, sinister group who have no scruples about ensuring compliance and using leverage on behalf of Chinese interests. Just look at what happened to Jack Ma.
Gemini, Give me examples of people that the US has retained passports pending investigations<p>It's standard procedure in every country for some investigations.
And what exactly are these founders being investigated for?
This is false equivalence.<p>Outside of immigration issues, you can only be made to surrender your passport if you have been arrested and indicted for a crime, as a part of bail. That power can only be granted by a judge.<p>China arbitrarily traps people in China without any such thing or any due process whatsoever.
> Outside of immigration issues, you can only be made to surrender your passport if you have been arrested and indicted for a crime, as a part of bail<p>This has historically not been the case, for example <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haig_v._Agee" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haig_v._Agee</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson</a>
The first case makes sense: ex-CIA officer explicitly outing CIA officers. Naturally, the government is going to step in and it's a false equivalence to compare to restricting random citizens.<p>As for your second case, US schools teach about the perils of McCarthyism. You neglected to link to the subsequent Supreme Court ruling in 1958 overturning the confiscation of the passport over protected speech. Note how long ago that was and how it's taught as a black stain on US history.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_v._Dulles" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_v._Dulles</a>
You didn't have to bring out the big gun usernames, we get it, you run a bot farm.
Anyone with a child support order that makes decent money is only one misrecorded or bounced payment away from being ineligible for a passport. The trigger is only 4 digits of USD.
> China arbitrarily traps people in China without any such thing or any due process whatsoever.<p>What makes you think there's no legal process for blocking nationals from leaving China?It's a very common instrument and in a bunch of countries it's an administrative measure with even less scrutinity than a judicial mandate. Do you consider France or the UK to be a countries without rule of law or due process?<p>But to the point in the US, for example, the government can just issue a warrant for you as a material witness or flag your passport and then you can't leave; these are hardly due processes and more like legal workarounds to do exactly the same thing; the US has disappeared plenty of people in much more sinister ways than that, however, so I agree that there's no equivalence here: the US is worse.
They are good actually.
Jack Ma is fine. If that's what you mean by ruthless then it's not really a big deal.
Jack Ma comes to mind: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ma#During_tech_crackdown" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ma#During_tech_crackdown</a><p><pre><code> Ma's voting rights were reduced from 50% to 6%.</code></pre>
Usually they just threaten the family that stayed in china to enforce compliance. As in visit by police and do a video call. Good old socialist playbook. Guess the CEOs were to workaholic ti be threatened with the mafia methods.
[flagged]
> Barring them from leaving the country feels a bit sinister for people who haven't been accused of committing any crimes<p>I don't think it's actually that uncommon in China, especially with high profile people. To China's credit, we often bar people from leaving the country if they're charged with a crime but not convicted of anything. While it's certainly scary and authoritarian, I think it's par for the course in China. Most companies have some amount of CCP representation in them, either on the board or some level of management.
> Barring them from leaving the country feels a bit sinister for people who haven't been accused of committing any crimes.<p>Feels like Guantanamo Bay all over again.
In what conceivable way?
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residential_Surveillance_at_a_Designated_Location" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residential_Surveillance_at_a_...</a>
Indefinite detention without charges. Sounds exactly the same.
> Barring them from leaving the country feels a bit sinister for people who haven't been accused of committing any crimes.<p>Pure speculation on my part, but i would be surprised if China didn't have our equivalent of export control laws, not difficult to fabricate a crime and pin it on founders.
They do have export control laws and such, but based on current and past behavior China’s Communist Party doesn’t need those laws to disappear people or create crimes and then make people guilty of said crimes.<p>Worth mentioning though that this is not how America functions, nor our rule of law.
Yr parent is new to standard China legal mechanisms and you pivoted off of that to invent a chain of stuff that isn’t real. Are they unfamiliar to us? Yes. But it’s worth speaking to whether the speculation is rational.
Their mistake was not reading the tea-leaves. Just as Youxia Zhang, Weidong He, etc. Although to be fair the party elders and generals were in a no-win situation. They could not just "leave."<p>They were likely baited to come in with some pretense and once they had them, they would not and will not let them get away.
Looks like the issue will be “dealt with” though we don’t know how exactly.
It's easy to see how this will play out. The entrepreneurs will get nothing. Most likely everyone else that has been paid (investors, etc) will keep what they received. Whether Meta or the CCP ends up with the proceeds of the entrepreneurs, that's anyone's guess.
I suspect this is more of a warning shot to others attempting the same playbook ("Singapore-washing", as I've heard folks call it): the state is watching, and shifting geopolitics means it's in their interest to retain successful talent and entities at home rather than let opposition have them.<p>If anything, I'm genuinely surprised it took them this long. America's been doing this for decades without much in the way of pushback, so China must feel very confident in its position to use such tactics.
I don't know if America has done anything quite like this. The example I'm looking for is where a company starts in the US but leaves and incorporates outside the US and then the US attempts to block acquisition by a foreign company. Also, the enforcement mechanism while vague seems un-American. America might tax the company upon exit but it wouldn't hold the founders hostage in America. If you have examples I'd be curious.
You don't need to incorporate in the US for this to happen to you. You should look up what happened to Marc Lasus after he founded Gemplus (spoiler, he's on social security while the company the CIA stole from him has $3b revenue) or how Frédéric Pierucci was taken hostage to force the sale of France's nuclear reactors to General Electric. I assume the US does this to all the other countries too.
Being stopped that late is a bit different than the US AFAIK,
but there is certainly the possibility of being stopped from work and (depending how you react) prevented from leaving the US for purely economic inventions:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_Secrecy_Act" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_Secrecy_Act</a><p>I find it notable that the US' actual checks on government have worked against expanding the secrecy act further into economic protectionism for favored industries, etc.
The US doesn't need to do 'something like this', they can just bar you from the global financial system if they don't like you. [1]<p>Or just order another country to snatch you up.<p>> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meng_Wanzhou" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meng_Wanzhou</a><p>She was arrested, and was being extradited from Canada into the United States... Because her Chinese company was doing business with Iran.<p>> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Bout" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Bout</a><p>This chap was arrested in Thailand, extradited, and did a decade in a US prison because he had the audacity of selling weapons from Russia to Colombia. I'm not sure how exactly US law is of any relevance to such transactions...<p>---<p>[1] Or, since 2025, just shoot a missile at your boat, with an option for a follow-up salvo if there any survivors. Strangely enough, everyone who has managed to survive both the initial attack, and the double-tap has so far been repatriated to their countries of origin, with no charges filed by the US.
US has blocked merges of companies especially with Chinese and other non western companies. Including Japan, India etc.<p>For instance US Steel acquisition by Nippon Steel(japanese) is one such example.
<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2vz83pg9eo" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2vz83pg9eo</a><p>More examples,<p>Ant Group(chinese) tried to buy MoneyGram (blocked in 2018)
<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/business/us-blocks-moneygram-sale-to-chinas-ant-financial-on-national-security-concern-idUSKBN1ET039/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/article/business/us-blocks-moneygram...</a><p>Xiamen Sanan Optoelectronics tried buying Lumileds, blocked again by US. Also Chinese ofc.<p>Broadcom and Qualcomm deal was also blocked, Broadcom was then Singapore based in process of moving to US I believe... (very sus happened in 2018 too, someone didn't pay Donald enough)<p><a href="https://thediplomat.com/2014/02/india-inc-and-the-cfius-national-security-review/" rel="nofollow">https://thediplomat.com/2014/02/india-inc-and-the-cfius-nati...</a>
Indian company forced to divest from US tech firm... (2013)<p>I am certain there must be European examples as well but smaller ofc, AI companies are over valued these days, most acquisitions were never this big in the olden days of pre 2020s...<p>I know for a fact that most folks don't want to invest in US for this reason other than in public equities or bonds ofc. Private foreign investment in US has been high only due to European pensions and Middle-eastern money going into it.<p>I don't know about how fair, far, or right it was compared to these were, detaining founders is also not confirmed, but sure let's assume it's true still...<p>Only difference in US is perhaps foreign folks can sue over it. Sometimes, if they are lucky and if the deal is worth it.<p>I find it strange people of HN being based in US can be so ill informed of what their country, does to foreign companies but be mad about things foreign companies do to them?<p>I mean sure rest(96%) of the world doesn't really exist, it's but a myth or a land the better folks of US only want to take value when needed?<p>Unsure what this comment meant, this has happened before as well btw, these are just post 2010s examples because they are relevant. Russians and US used to do this too, India and US were worse of pre-2000s, Japan and US were at their throats in 1980s, in terms of trade and acquisition...
Famously back in the day Grindr , which had a plot point in the Silicon Valley series . Probably more obscure ones that havent been heard of outside software in the Hard tech space like MotorSich (Ukranian) was being courted by Chinese investment got blocked due to US pressure. And very recently the whole TikTok fiasco.
What examples do you have of the US government doing to CEOs what has happened to people like Jack Ma and many other public figures?<p>For China, there are so many examples of people doing 180s and being full of contrition after those interventions, it's hard to imagine anything but severe intimidation or worse happening behind closed doors.
I'm totally fine with what-about-ism here; making China a better place to live and do business is out of my jurisdiction and doesn't help me, encouraging the USA to do better will.
You've been all over this this thread responding with the same whataboutist comments claiming America does the same thing. And yet, I'm pretty sure America hasn't held American citizens hostage in order to force them to unwind a sale of a foreign company they founded to a different foreign company.
US absolutely has exit bans on people who break/is being investigated for national security and export control laws, which is what Manus did. Except Americans don't call it hostage taking when they do it.
You're right. To my knowledge, we don't hold citizens hostage to force them to unwind the sale of a foreign company they smuggled out of America into another country to a different foreign company.<p>But you cannot seriously hold America up as blameless when we've wielded our economy as a cudgel against anyone we remotely disagree with (sanctions against Cuba, Iran, China, Russia, etc; tariffs against <i>everybody</i>), have military bases scattered around the world to invade anyone at a moment's notice, regularly park our navy off foreign shores to coerce desired outcomes, and dronestrike civilians as a final saber-rattling before full-fledged conflict.<p>The details change, but the fundamental playbook - using state violence to coerce outcomes favorable to said state - is far from new. Hell, take a look beyond the past thirty years of history and there's a <i>glut</i> of incidents where empires used this sort of leverage to achieve outcomes - including the United States! We've traded political prisoners to achieve negotiated outcomes <i>repeatedly</i>, we just use different words to make ourselves feel better about it. We've propped up entire puppet states to ensure American corporate interests were served instead!<p>Like, <i>holy shit</i>, why do I have to teach you naysayers what's already outlined in history books just because you can't be bothered to do the assigned reading?
Just last year the USA de-banked (from EU banks) EU citizens who are International Criminal Court officials for "opening preliminary investigations against Israeli personnel". The USA wields incredible power over financial interactions.
Of the course the USA does it. Obama was totally ruthless with such economic warfare, including on the US usual lackeys. See for instance:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Pierucci" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Pierucci</a>
While I don’t agree with your tone, and I’m sure an unbiased reading of history also wouldn’t agree with your tone…<p>Who would you rather be world police? One or more of <i>Cuba, Iran, China, Russia</i>?
I don't think anyone is holding the US as blameless or perfect, but it gets <i>exhausting</i> to see Chinese propaganda every single time anything like this happens.<p>When the US does something reprehensible, people rarely come up in droves going on and about China's enablement of the North Korean regime or the many abuses enacted on its population, but every single time the US does <i>anything</i> we had to read a whole lot on how "at least China doesn't invade countries" as if the prime reason as to why China doesn't tend to involve itself militarily isn't precisely American hegemony. The rate at which the country is portrayed as some paragon of human rights, equality and peacefulness is either insane, deluded, or paid for.
You have to be joking.<p>The media is almost daily full of China scares.
Also, the comments here are not talking about who started this war, with the GPU sanctions and the arrest of the daughter of Huawei's founder.<p>Does it mean the Chinese are the good guys? No, because there are not good guys, but there is certainly a side that is extremely aggressive an can't conceive that others can have their own interests. And it's not the Chinese.
> The media is almost daily full of China scares<p>That gets repeated a lot. Is there any source?<p>> there is certainly a side that is extremely aggressive an can't conceive that others can have their own interests. And it's not the Chinese.<p>Ask the Taiwanese about it. Or most countries dealing with border disputes with the PRC.
>but there is certainly a side that is extremely aggressive an can't conceive that others can have their own interests. And it's not the Chinese.<p>It's not the Chinese? You sure? There's probably nobody more economically aggressive in the planet and they just threw a hissy fit at the EU the other day for doing something they've been doing since forever.<p>I care not for "the media", I care that I don't have enough fingers to count the amount of people trying to justify this in this very comment section. I'm sure western media is not favorable to Chinese interests, I'd be <i>utterly baffled</i> if Chinese media was favorable to western interests. I do not expect public sentiment to follow a party line because <i>we are better than that</i>, but I do expect a certain reticence to go all out and justify opposition in intellectually rotten ways.
> You're right.<p>You should have just left it at that.
> have military bases scattered around the world to invade anyone at a moment's notice<p>I wonder how that came about?<p>What’s that fence analogy called?<p>Chester-what?
I think people are frustrated with the firehose of whataboutism rather than disagreeing with you with the idea that things are not perfect.
I mean, the whataboutism is a critical tool in negating propaganda. Rather than focus on the reprehensibility of <i>anyone</i> using threats of violence like this to force specific outcomes favorable to domestic policy, everyone is instead hung up on the fact <i>China</i> did this.<p>Whataboutism, used effectively, is meant to draw parallels rather than excuse behavior. <i>Fuck</i> China for what it's doing here, but also <i>fuck</i> the countries and entities who have used similar tactics in the past to great effect. Don't just conveniently put on blinders for what's happening/happened at home all because the government-labelled "baddie" did it too.
Whataboutism, used effectively, is designed to change the subject and stop detailed exploration of the topic at hand. Which is what you're doing in this thread. We don't need to turn a news-relevant thread specifically about the CCP into a thread relitigating decades of American government and business behavior. You can make a separate submission to discuss the US if you'd like.
> The details change, but the fundamental playbook - using state violence to coerce outcomes favorable to said state - is far from new. Hell,<p>There is a massive difference in degree and kind here. Mixing them up at this level is spherical cow territory.
This just PRC finally applying their version of US export controls, i.e. PRC gets to control PRC originated algos, same argument as TikTok. The founders aren't held "hostage", they're under investigation for violating export control and national security laws. PRC hinted signalled pretty clearly they would use art12 (catch all clause) of export control laws and offshore affiliate rules (to address Singapore loophole) before Manus deal closed - Manus ignored loud hints. The difference is PRC wasn't super judicious in enforcing AI related export controls (especially since agent development new hence art12), US would have ensured this control list tech wouldn't leave US territory via foreign product rule / CFIUS / BIS. PRC gave pretty clear signals to Manus what was going to happen hoping they'd unwind on their own, but they didn't so now they're going to eat shit.<p>PRC still haven't gone the step up to ban PRC strategic talent from working in US like US has for PRC semi. Don't be surprised in 5-10 years US has to hire PRC workers with obfuscated identities like PRC dealing with US/TW talent in PRC EUV. Plenty more room how these things can escalate depending on how serious PRC starts to treat dual use AI.
[flagged]
How much is Xi paying the Washington Post, which reports:<p>"In January, Beijing began investigating Manus for compliance with export controls [...]"<p>You could make way more money as an AI shill.
all the epetroyuan pandabond credits.
interesting. Manus is nominally a Singapore based company and should be immune to these actions. Tiktok argued that it was headquartered in Singapore with a Singaporean CEO. breaking singapore’s fig leaf might prove problematic in the long run.
The founders are Chinese citizens, and pressure was applied to the founders personally. Thus Singapore was given room to save face re: sovereignty.
> After a $75 million fundraising round led by U.S. venture firm Benchmark in May 2025, Manus shut its China offices in July, laying off dozens of employees. It then moved its operations to Singapore.<p>The company itself was based in mainland China less than 12 months ago.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR):<p>So you said today, as you often say that you live in Singapore. Of what nation are you a citizen?<p>Shou Chew:<p>Singapore.<p>Cotton:<p>Are you a citizen of any other nation?<p>Chew:<p>No, Senator.<p>Cotton:<p>Have you ever applied for Chinese citizenship?<p>Chew:<p>Senator? I served my nation in Singapore. No, I did not.<p>Cotton:<p>Do you have a Singaporean passport?<p>Chew:<p>Yes, and I served my military for two and a half years in Singapore.<p>Cotton:<p>Do you have any other passports from any other nations?<p>Chew:<p>No, Senator.<p>Cotton:<p>Your wife is an American citizen. Your children are American citizens?<p>Chew:<p>That's correct.<p>Cotton:<p>Have you ever applied for American citizenship?<p>Chew:<p>No, not yet.<p>Cotton:<p>Okay. Have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party?<p>Chew:<p>Senator? I'm Singaporean, no.<p>Cotton:<p>Have you ever been associated or affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party?<p>Chew:<p>No. Senator, again, I'm Singaporean.
Funny when you consider the world owes a lot of AI advancements to both Meta and Google, their open releases really did shift things, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, especially for China, which as far as I know were not releasing as much in AI as they have been beforehand. I remember when Meta released Llama originally people were speculating about it, but it wound up producing a lot of projects that used it, I'm sure some in China. I know that Perplexity has its own custom model on top of Llama that they use for their default model, and its pretty darn good.
Wasn’t Llama a leak that got so popular meta decided to change their whole approach?<p>I was working at Google at the time. Before Llama, releasing weights was not even worth a discussion.
If I'm remembering right, it was weirder than that, as Llama's originally release strategy was sort of bizarre.<p>You did have to apply for access, but if you met their criteria (basically if you were the right profile of researcher or in government), you got direct access to the model weights, not just an API for a hosted model. So access was restricted, but the full weights were shared.<p>I believe that the model was leaked by multiple people, some of which didn't work at Meta but had been granted access to the weights.
Not sure, but open weights have had their effects. For example, look at Wan 2.2 the last open weights Wan release, still the most powerful Video inference out there, to the level of quality it provides, unfortunately, it went closed source, but before they did, the community had built all sorts of tooling and LoRas on top of it. Nothing comes close for video a year later. Back to llama though, look at all the open models people run offline through their Macs. It definitely had a net positive.
I'm curious how this view fits in with BERT or the T5 release which prior to the current LLM craze were the de facto language models for use in pretty much any tasks. Was this a position that would've otherwise grown without the llama release?
> Funny when you consider the world owes a lot of AI advancements to both Meta and Google<p>Funny how ByteDance kicked both their asses so hard at RecSys algos, they had to go back to the drawing board to meet the newly redefined expectations on the quality of short-form video recommendations.
>not immediately clear on what grounds China was seeking the annulment of a deal involving a Singapore-based company and how, if at all, a completed acquisition transaction would be unwound.<p>Interesting. I wonder what sorts of threats China could make to back up this demand, or if this is more of a warning for future acquisitions in the space.
China will succeed, despite china.
Chinese government blocks stupid American from overpaying for Chinese technology thereby missing out on free taxable revenue....
I really wonder what the employee status gonna be like. It has been quite some time now, I think Meta and Manus are deeply binded lol. As a Manus user, I am liking the product. Sad to see social criticism of them and to see this news.
The… hands of fate?
Besides the fact that the founders are in China and are barred from leaving, is there anything that prevents Manus/Meta from just telling the CCP to kick rocks?<p>Sure they can object to it or claim they are "blocking" the sale, but is there really anything they can do considering that Manus is no longer within their jurisdiction?
I think it's precisely the fact that the founders live in China. The CCP can make them... kick rocks... for the rest of their lives.<p>Generally speaking this seems bad for Chinese companies, though. They were able to raise capital from the West by running out of "Singapore"; I think basically every investor will have significant pause investing in Chinese-national-owned startups after this, "Singapore-based" or not.
The CCP is known to be very aggressive. Even if the founders acquired Singaporean citizenship (which is way easier for ethnic Chinese people than for other races), the CCP would have taken them hostage if they just set foot in China like for a business trip. They can invent a crime and subject them to a trial with Chinese rules. What can Singapore do? It’s a tiny country that tries to walk a tightrope by simultaneously maintaining good relations with both China and the U.S.
They wouldn't have to "invent a crime", circumventing state interests in strategic technology is likely already illegal.
> which is way easier for ethnic Chinese people than for other races<p>Nationals. The word you are looking for is nationals.
> Generally speaking this seems bad for Chinese companies, though.<p>Anyone who has ever thought otherwise was just naive. This is anything but news. If you’ve had an impression that China capital market is free and western-like, you were right - it was an impression. Always has been.
Not only that, but they can make life inconvenient for your family. Nobody reasonable would accuse the CCP of outright violence, but there are a million bureaucracy-related tricks the state can pull to leverage you and/or your family.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests...</a>
"Nobody reasonable"??
Just look at the Jack Ma case <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/04/business/china-jack-ma-rumor-detention-intl-hnk" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/04/business/china-jack-ma-rumor-...</a><p>They kept him under house arrest for years and now he complies
Are you really asking whether business deals can be unwound for whatever reason, like how ASML is "forbidden" to sell to certain customers after contracts are signed?
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/business/china-meta-manus-ai-deal.html?unlocked_article_code=1.eFA.2ZPR.H9i-KMkksB8w&smid=url-share" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/business/china-meta-manus...</a>
Who cares after openclaw ?
> The Chinese government’s intervention in the transaction drew alarm among tech founders and venture capitalists in the country who were hoping to take advantage of the so-called Singapore-washing model, where companies relocate from China to the city-state to avoid scrutiny from Beijing and Washington.<p>If the US is going to treat AI technology as a strategic issue upon which it's going to play the national security card, it's not really valid to start the pearl-clutching when China does the same.<p>Seems like Manus and Meta thought they were going to be clever, and that China wasn't going to play any any of the cards they were holding. Even GPT-2 could've told them that was a dumb idea.
Can we finally acknowledge the obvious Singapore-washing that Chinese companies have been doing for years or are we going to keep pretending?
Funny that Manus already shows "by meta" along with the logo pretty prominently.
Tit for tat. US administration thought they would contain China. Now Deepseek v4 is running on their home grown chips. US companies lost that hardware revenue and dependency instead.
Weird, why does China want GPUs then?<p>Also, regarding that "tit for tat", how large of a "tat" is due, regarding decades of corporate espionage?
Deepseek v4 is still pretty far behind the frontier models though.
It's really hard to tell. Almost all the models have the benchmarks in their training data, which pushes us into the realm of basing model capability rankings on vibes. I think the OSS models tend to do worse on things outside their corpus, but Deepseek specifically has done insanely good work on efficiency and scaling, which is verifiable in a way capabilities are not.
This will be awkward, given the acquisition is already complete
Manus is saved, 2 billion is such an undervaluation considering much worse companies like minimax is valued at 30 billion.
What leverage does China have here to enforce this? Meta doesn't do business in China. Can't they just give them the middle finger?
“Wouldn’t it be a shame if your family’s organs were harvested?”<p>That is the leverage that China has.
Meta absolutely does business in China.
e.g. <a href="https://www.metacareers.com/v2/locations/shenzhen/?p[offices][0]=Shenzhen%2C%20China&offices[0]=Shenzhen%2C%20China" rel="nofollow">https://www.metacareers.com/v2/locations/shenzhen/?p[offices...</a><p><a href="https://www.metacareers.com/v2/locations/shanghai/?p[offices][0]=Shanghai%2C%20China&offices[0]=Shanghai%2C%20China" rel="nofollow">https://www.metacareers.com/v2/locations/shanghai/?p[offices...</a><p><a href="https://www.metacareers.com/v2/locations/hongkong/?p[offices][0]=Hong%20Kong&offices[0]=Hong%20Kong" rel="nofollow">https://www.metacareers.com/v2/locations/hongkong/?p[offices...</a><p>I also assume, like most advertising platforms, they cater heavily to the China export market.
There has been a lot of discussion here on why the founders were detained and whether this is normal for other countries. All one has to do is look at what Chinese Communist Party has done to Uyghurs to understand how far they will go to neutralize opposing thought.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_China" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_Chin...</a>
So China is just claiming that anyone who is ethnically Chinese should be pressured? Manus is in Singapore and has no direct connections to China physically and financially. SG offices, SG product, SG founders with family on the mainland.
Manus started in China, built by Chinese talent, hence all their work under purview of PRC export control laws, PRC merely closing loophole on SG washing. They haven't even done nuclear option like banning PRC from working in US AI like US has done in PRC semi.
First time interacting with a totalitarian government?
[dead]
Poor Meta. AI is really just not working out for them.
Obviously. With the US first controlling Venezuelan energy supplies to China and then cutting of Iranian energy supplies to China (as well as to the EU), what do you expect?<p>China isn't as stupid as the EU, which just says thanks and would you perhaps like to blow up another pipeline?<p>Hormuz will stay closed by the pirates. LNG terminals are already built in Alaska to supply the Asian "allies", whose economy the US also ruins.<p>If the EU had any backbone, it would cut off the US from ASML.
Somehow this is about the EU?
The world order is early on in a major restructuring. The EU is a major region and on a path to greater self reliance and determination. This is good for the world imo (as an American)
EU is on the right path, but the problem is that we’re going way too slow.<p>Check out the “28th regime” that standardizes incorporation for European companies, it was announced back in November, and it won’t see the light this year probably. We can’t wait any second more, we need to act now not to become totally irrelevant and it might even be too late.
US controlling the world's energy routes goes back to the Suez Crisis, where it wrestled the canal from Britain. Reagan blew up a Russian-German pipeline. The Nord Stream sabotage was at least condoned and cheered on. Now the closure of Hormuz was first provoked and then co-opted by the US.<p>Yes, this is about the rest of the world.
>If the EU had any backbone, it would cut off the US from ASML.<p>ASML depends on a lot of US technologies.