Another thing I learned at the weekly AI sessions hosted by Georgia Tech was the capabilities of an AI tool I’d heard of but overlooked: Manus. It has agentic capabilities like Claude and ChatGPT, and it’s so good that Mark Zuckerberg bought the company for $2 billion last December (see here). The deal closed, and Manus became part of Meta. But the story has more twists and turns. On April 27, 2026, the Chinese government ordered Meta to unwind the acquisition (see here). It’s basically forcing Meta to accept a refund for the purchase price of Manus. We’ll see how that plays out.

Last night, I got to see how an AI engineer who knows Manus well uses it. He showed us what he’d created with Manus and how he uses it daily. I was impressed. Comparing it to Claude, I noticed a big difference. Claude has various products that can do different things, like Claude Design. Manus can do the same things, as far as I can tell, but the capabilities are all within the single Manus product.

I walked away with a better understanding of why Zuckerberg bought the company so quickly, and I’m looking forward to playing with Manus myself.