companies

Butterfly Effect

Maker of the Manus AI agent and Monica browser assistant, relocated from China to Singapore amid a blocked Meta acquisition.

Butterfly Effect was founded in 2022, two months before ChatGPT's public launch, by Xiao Hong, with Ji Yichao joining as co-founder and chief scientist. Its first product, Monica, launched in 2023 as a browser extension that put GPT-4 and other commercial LLMs behind one sidebar interface for chat, translation, and writing help, and quietly built a large user base before the company became known for anything else. The company's second product, Manus, launched in invite-only beta in March 2025 and went viral almost immediately as one of the first widely used autonomous agents capable of planning multi-step tasks, browsing the web, and executing code without constant prompting. Funding followed fast: a Series A brought in Sequoia China (HongShan) and Tencent in late 2024, and a $75 million Series B led by Benchmark in April 2025 valued the company at roughly $500 million, five times its valuation just months earlier. In mid-2025 the company relocated its headquarters and core technical staff from Beijing and Wuhan to Singapore, operating there as Butterfly Effect Pte. Ltd. Meta agreed to acquire the company for a reported $2 billion or more in December 2025, but China's National Development and Reform Commission blocked the deal in April 2026 over export-control and technology-transfer concerns, leaving Butterfly Effect independent as it explores a fresh funding round.

Founded

2022

Headquarters

Singapore

Sector

applications