Butterfly Effect, Manus’ parent company, raised more than $500 million in its first funding round since the Meta acquisition deal fell through. Boyu Capital and IDG Capital led the round, with existing shareholders Tencent, HSG, ZhenFund and others participating; the company did not disclose its valuation and says it will continue hiring. Manus offers AI agents, chatbots and vibe-coding tools, and recently launched Manus 2.0 and the standalone agent app Cue.
Photon raises $4.5 million in seed funding to develop tools for building AI agents that work through messaging services including iMessage and WhatsApp. Its toolkit includes a unified API, channel framework, command-line interface, and observability suite, and supports Telegram, SMS/RCS, email, and voice. Photon says it has more than 40,000 developer sign-ups, 10x revenue growth in four months, and customers including Corgi Insurance and Rho.
Shanghai-based Anew Labs, a ByteDance spinoff using AI for drug discovery, raises $290 million from HSG, IDG Capital, and other investors at a $1.5 billion valuation. The fundraising follows the unit’s separation from ByteDance.
