🦋 "The Butterfly That Swallowed the Dragon": How Meta and Manus Engineered the Largest Escape from China at $3 Billion?
On December 29, 2025, while the world celebrated New Year, the largest "Geopolitical Hack" in the history of artificial intelligence was being made in the shadows.
"Xiao Hong", a 33-year-old Chinese entrepreneur, rejected an offer of $30 million from ByteDance (TikTok) in 2024, only to sell his company Manus to Meta for $3 billion after just 20 months.
This isn't a story of acquisition; it's a story of "technological secession." How did a young man succeed in building a company in Beijing, moving it to Singapore, cutting every thread connecting it to China, and selling it to America's biggest rival?
Let's do a "precise dissection" of this surgical operation that has redrawn the map of global innovation 🇨🇳🇸🇬🇺🇸:
1️⃣ First: Numbers that defy logic - super speed 🚀💸
Price: $2.5 billion in cash + $500 million in "retention bonuses" for employees (averaging $5 million per employee!).
Revenue: Reached $125 million (ARR) faster than any company in history (faster than Slack, Zoom, even ChatGPT).
Value: Meta paid 24 times the revenue. Why? Because they didn't buy software; they bought the "execution layer" (Execution Layer) that turns AI chatter into economic actions.
2️⃣ Second: The mastermind - "Xiao Hong" and the philosophy of "kitbashing" 🧠🧩
"Hong" is not an academic researcher; he is a "genius hybrid."
The secret: He didn't build a language model from scratch (costly and slow). Instead, he built an "execution environment" on top of others' models (Claude).
Historic rejection: Turned down $30 million from ByteDance at the height of China's "funding winter." He knew staying in China meant submission to the state, while leaving meant global reach.
Team: Brought in "Zhang Tao" (former international product manager at TikTok) who knows how to conquer the world from China.
3️⃣ Third: The great escape - "The Singapore Wash" 🧼🛫
The plan was executed with military precision:
May 2025: Relocation of executives to Singapore.
June: Change of legal headquarters.
July: Laid off the entire Beijing team (80 employees) and paid generous severance to silence them.
Purification: Deleted all Chinese social media accounts, canceled contracts with Alibaba.
Investor buyout: Forced Chinese investors (Tencent, Sequoia China) to sell and exit completely to clean the "cap table" of any Chinese association that might anger Washington.
4️⃣ Fourth: The shock in Beijing - too late 🐉🛑
The Chinese government felt "frustrated," but was unable to do anything.
The company became legally Singaporean. Technology, talent, and returns went to America.
This success created a "dangerous precedent": every talented Chinese founder now sees a clear path: "Build in China, migrate to Singapore, sell to Americans." This threatens to drain China of its innovative minds.
5️⃣ Fifth: Why did Meta pay billions for a "wrapper"? 📦🤖
Critics say Manus is just a front for Claude. Meta says it doesn't matter.
Meta has 3.5 billion users interacting with AI, yet they can't do anything with it.
Manus gives them the ability to "act" (book, buy, conduct complex searches).
Zuckerberg bought the "body" that was missing from his digital "mind."
🔴 Strategic takeaway:
We are witnessing a shift in "power balances." America is using its money and appeal to siphon innovation from China through the "Singapore gateway."
What "Xiao Hong" did is practical proof that "technological sovereignty" isn't about who owns the land, but who controls mobility and the ability to sell in the highest-value market.
💡 Your question: Do you think China will close the "Singapore loophole" with repressive measures, or will brain drain accelerate to become the biggest hemorrhage for the dragon by 2026? Share your analysis. 👇