Chinese AI startup Manus reportedly gets funding from Benchmark at $500M valuation

Chinese startup Manus AI, which works on building tools related to AI agents, has picked up $75 million in a funding round led by Benchmark at a roughly $500 million valuation, according to Bloomberg.

The company will use the money to expand to new markets, including the U.S., Japan, and the Middle East, Bloomberg noted, citing people familiar with the matter.

Bloomberg’s report suggests that the fresh round has quintupled the valuation of Manus, which previously raised somewhere north of $10 million from backers including Tencent and HSG (formerly Sequoia China).

Manus came into the spotlight in March when the company launched a demo of a general AI agent that could complete various tasks. (In TechCrunch’s testing, it didn’t work quite as well as advertised.) The company later launched paid subscription plans costing between $39 per month and $199 per month.