From ‘Shell Product’ to $2 Billion: The Manus AI Story Nobody Saw Coming

Source: Dev.to

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Nine months. That’s all it took for Manus AI to go from being called an “unusable shell product” to closing a $2 billion acquisition with Meta.

This isn’t just an acquisition story. It’s a signal about where AI is heading and what it means if you’re building products in this space.

The Demo That Broke the Internet

March 2025 – Manus drops a demo that immediately goes viral. The pitch was simple but revolutionary: this is the first “general AI agent,” an AI that actually does things, not just talks about them.

• You give it a task.
• You watch it plan.
• You watch it execute.
• You get real results.

No wall of text. No “here’s how you could do it.” Actual output.

“The AI that DOES” became Manus’s viral tagline, and it hit different. This wasn’t another chatbot. This was something new.

The hype was immediate and intense. Invite codes were selling for $14 000 on Xianyu, China’s secondary marketplace. People were calling it the next DeepSeek moment. The transparency layer, where you could literally watch every action the agent takes in real time, felt genuinely innovative.

But hype is a loan you have to pay back with results – and Manus was about to default.

The Brutal Backlash

Chinese social media turned hostile fast. The accusations were brutal and specific:

• “Pure shell product” – critics claimed it was just a wrapper on Claude with nothing original.
• “Hunger marketing” – accusations that they raised money and ran.
• 800 credits to upload a single file – users were burning through resources on basic tasks.
• Reddit threads calling it “absolutely unusable.”

Most startups die at this stage. Once the “scam” narrative takes hold, you can’t out‑market your way out of it. The product had real problems, and the court of public opinion had already rendered its verdict.

When your product is called a shell product by the very market you’re trying to capture, that’s usually a death sentence.

But Manus didn’t die. They made a decision that would change everything.

The $100 Million Resurrection

Instead of chasing Twitter virality, Manus started chasing invoices. They went completely heads‑down on product.

• June 2025 – Playbook templates launched, pre‑built task flows that cut credit consumption by 30 %. Users could now accomplish complex workflows without burning through their allocation.
• July 2025 – Chat Mode introduced; simple queries now used 5 credits instead of 100. The product became actually usable for everyday tasks.

Enterprise deals then started landing:

Real companies. Real invoices. Real validation.

• By December 2025 – $100 million ARR and 2 million users.

From “shell product” to nine‑figure revenue in six months. That’s not a pivot. That’s a resurrection.

Why Meta Paid $2 Billion in 10 Days

Normal M&A takes months of due diligence, legal review, integration planning, and negotiation rounds. Meta closed in 10 days.

That’s not strategic M&A. That’s desperation. And when you understand the competitive landscape, it makes perfect sense.

What Meta Was Facing

• Google – Gemini Agents rolling out across Workspace.
• Microsoft – Copilot embedded everywhere.
• OpenAI – Function‑calling agents shipping rapidly.
• Anthropic – Claude becoming the go‑to for agentic workflows.

Everyone was moving. Meta was stuck.

Meta didn’t just buy revenue. They bought an agentic architecture they were years behind on building themselves.

Hidden agenda: Meta is quietly shifting away from open source, building a proprietary model codenamed “Avocado.” The “Llama is free forever” era? That’s changing. They need revenue from AI, not just developer goodwill.

According to Gartner, 40 % of enterprise apps will feature task‑specific AI agents by the end of 2026 – up from 5 % the year prior. Meta paid $2 billion to be on the right side of that shift.