companies

Butterfly Effect

Produttrice dell’agente IA Manus e dell’assistente per browser Monica, trasferitasi dalla Cina a Singapore mentre un’acquisizione da parte di Meta era bloccata.

In inglese

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