ManusAI: A Chinese AI Agent Ignites Global Interest, Challenging Silicon Valley Giants

ManusAI: A Chinese AI Agent Ignites Global Interest, Challenging Silicon Valley GiantsNews broke on March 14th about ManusAI, a Chinese AI agent that has captivated global attention over the past week. The competition for limited beta access has been fierce, likened to securing front-row tickets to a superstar concert

ManusAI: A Chinese AI Agent Ignites Global Interest, Challenging Silicon Valley Giants

News broke on March 14th about ManusAI, a Chinese AI agent that has captivated global attention over the past week. The competition for limited beta access has been fierce, likened to securing front-row tickets to a superstar concert. Developed by Chinese startup Butterfly Effect, ManusAIs near-perfect demonstration video went viral, showcasing incredibly impressive capabilities. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey lauded it as "exceptional," while a Hugging Face product lead called it "the most disruptive AI tool I've ever experienced." A carefully orchestrated scarcity further fueled the hype, with only 1% of applicants gaining access, and invitation codes fetching over $1,000 on third-party platforms.

Bloomberg columnist Catherine Thorbecke authored a detailed account after several hours of testing ManusAI. While acknowledging occasional glitches and imperfections, she found the overall performance remarkably impressive. Thorbecke argued that ManusAI isn't just a repeat of the "DeepSeek moment," but something entirely different. It powerfully demonstrates the capability of Chinese startups to rival American companies in AI product development.

Previously, DeepSeek's impressive, cost-effective AI models, significantly cheaper than their US counterparts, had already showcased Chinese AI prowess. ManusAI goes further; it's not simply a chatbot built on external models, but a finely tuned, practical AI tool capable of independently completing a range of real-world tasks.

ManusAI might not be the next leap towards Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), but its value lies in proving that emerging AI technologies are already delivering real-world utility. If the "DeepSeek moment" highlighted technological breakthroughs, ManusAI emphasizes product innovation. It sends a strong message to Silicon Valley: focus more on practical consumer applications. Most people don't need or want AI to take over creative work, but they crave technology to help them with tedious and time-consuming tasks.

Thorbecke tasked ManusAI with creating her personal website. Within approximately 30 minutes, ManusAI delivered a temporary URL with a design and functionality matching her requirements. It automatically scraped public data to generate a bio page, linked her portfolio to her recent columns, and integrated her email, LinkedIn, and X (formerly Twitter) accounts. While some text might need editing, it was an excellent first draft. Even more impressive, ManusAI offered guidance on permanent hosting or allowed Thorbecke to download the project files. This task had been languishing on her to-do list for years. Thorbecke noted that without ManusAI, she would have likely had to hire a programmer, pay for software services, or spend days building the site herself.

Of course, ManusAI has clear shortcomings. It crashed during a real estate market analysis request, and some website access requests were blocked by anti-bot verification mechanisms. While it crafted a detailed weekend train travel plan, it failed to book tickets.

Despite these flaws, the exceptional user experience remains striking: the entire process is visualized, with the option to manually take over at any time. The ManusAI team responded to some issues, explaining that the current version is far from the final product and the beta invitation-only approach was due to "limited server capacity." Even in beta, ManusAI offers impressive functionality.

In contrast, DeepSeek chose to open-source its research, proving its capabilities through tangible results. Most technical details about ManusAI have been shared via social media, revealing it's built by fine-tuning Anthropic's Claude and Alibaba's Qwen models. However, ManusAI never claims a breakthrough in AI model research it positions itself as a product.

Leading US AI companies have long viewed agents tools that browse the web and complete tasks for users as the next major leap in the technology. This trend became more apparent earlier this year when OpenAI launched similar products (including Operator and DeepResearch). ManusAI claims its service outperforms DeepResearch in industry benchmarks, reportedly achieving this at a significantly lower cost.

Companies like OpenAI have raised tens of billions of dollars pursuing AGI building models smarter than or as smart as humans. But ManusAI's focus on practical, grounded applications is enough to make Silicon Valley uneasy. It further commoditizes the underlying technologies large labs are building and accelerates the competition to produce products based on them.

Global apprehension exists about granting agents too much autonomy, and for good reason. In the US, these systems have shown a potential for uncontrolled behavior. OpenAI's Operator, for example, inexplicably spent $32 on 12 eggs for a tech columnist. One can imagine the potentially more serious consequences as these tools gain more power. The enormous geopolitical implications of unleashing these agents, and their impact on the labor market, should not be overlooked. Policymakers must keep pace with the industry, rapidly developing frameworks to address the safety and accountability issues of this new era.

ManusAI also shows China has found a way to compete with Silicon Valley giants. The ManusAI launch is striking; while still addressing technical issues, its target is clearly international users: its interface is entirely in English, and the polished demonstration video mirrors the style of US tech launches. As with many such launches, whether the final version of ManusAI lives up to its flashy debut remains to be seen.

The excitement around ManusAIs agent-based approach will benefit US companies that have been predicting its future potential. But it also serves as a reminder that businesses and consumers now crave tools that simplify daily life, not visions of technology surpassing human intelligence.