China seeks to block US tech giant Meta from AI acquisition

Bejing tightens scrutiny of artificial quality manufacture amid intensifying geopolitical rivalry with the US implicit the technology.

China has said it is blocking tech elephantine Meta from an acquisition of artificial quality (AI) startup Manus, tightening scrutiny of concern successful home startups processing frontier technologies from the United States.

China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said connected Monday that it was prohibiting the overseas acquisition of Manus, without specifically naming Meta.

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The determination highlights Beijing’s accrued interest implicit US acquisitions of Chinese AI endowment and intelligence property, arsenic Washington tries to bounds Chinese tech firms’ entree to precocious US chips.

It was not instantly wide connected what grounds China was seeking the annulment of a woody involving a Singapore-based institution and how, if astatine all, a completed acquisition transaction would beryllium unwound.

Manus, which has Chinese roots but is based successful Singapore, provides general-purpose AI agents designed to transportation retired analyzable tasks with minimal quality intervention.

The telephone to annul the woody was made by the committee successful accordance with Chinese laws and regulations, the NDRC’s connection said.

California-based Meta said successful effect to the statement: “The transaction complied afloat with applicable law. We expect an due solution to the inquiry.”

A White House spokesperson said successful a connection that the Trump medication “will proceed defending America’s starring and innovative exertion assemblage against undue overseas interference of immoderate sort”.

Meta announced successful December that it was acquiring Manus. It is simply a uncommon lawsuit of a large US tech radical buying an AI institution with beardown links to China. The woody was forecasted to assistance grow AI offerings crossed Meta’s platforms.

Meta had said determination would beryllium “no continuing Chinese ownership interests successful Manus” and that Manus would discontinue its services and operations successful China.

But China said successful January that it would analyse whether the acquisition would beryllium accordant with its laws and regulations.

After a $75m fundraising circular led by US task steadfast Benchmark successful May 2025, Manus unopen its China offices, laying disconnected dozens of employees. It past moved its operations to Singapore.

This enabled Manus’s genitor company, Butterfly Effect, to reincorporate ⁠in Singapore and bypass US concern restrictions connected Chinese AI firms, arsenic good arsenic Chinese rules limiting home AI firms’ quality to transportation their IP and superior overseas.

The Chinese bid to artifact the woody comes weeks earlier a planned mid-May acme betwixt US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping successful Beijing.