[bigcat12345678]

I am Chinese and AI founder since 2023

This statement is completely baseless

1. Manus was never targeting Chinese domestic market, for obvious reasons

2. Manus was founded by successful founder with exit, backed toptier investors in China, they always have great reputation in the AI industry

3. Prior to manus' launch, the team developed Monica, as they are the frontier AI chat bot aggregator

I really felt disgusted by stereotyping Chinese startup: they either baselessly downplay the innovation by the team, or they attribute their success to morally inferior conduct, which both are never really different than their western counterparts.

Please stop stereotyping Chinese startup

[TigerHix]

I am also Chinese and AI founder.

> they always have great reputation in the AI industry

Highly doubt this.

> the team developed Monica, as they are the frontier AI chat bot aggregator

How is this remotely technically impressive? LLM chat apps have been commoditized for years already.

Even within the Chinese tech/AI community, Manus has often been frowned upon. People literally built OpenManus the next day after Manus' launch marketing went viral to demonstrate the point. Most of the positive coverage around Manus came from WeChat PR articles, which I'm sure you know how those Gongzhonghao work.

I agree that the West often stereotypes Chinese startups in unfair ways. But the Manus story is about as stereotypical as it gets.

[bigcat12345678]

> People literally built OpenManus the next day after Manus' launch marketing went viral to demonstrate the point.

I tried openmanus and I frowned at openmanus team's intentionally attention grabbing gimmick after manus' overnight success, and open manus does not work at the moment.

[zingar]

> People literally built OpenManus the next day after Manus' launch marketing

This is not a good sign but may not be as terrible as it used to be: it seems like as soon as one idea makes money someone else is able to reproduce it fast. The barrier for defensibility is so much higher than before.

[yuzhun]

I am also Chinese and AI user. Manus is excellent, and it's hard to find a rival when it comes to making PPTs. The effect of wild search is exaggerated. The hype from official accounts is one thing, and the overwhelming scam comments on social media are another; neither is accurate. It has been almost a year. If Manus were really as simple as just getting Open Manus up and running, we should have seen many similar products. But unfortunately, there's only one Manus.

[oefrha]

Manus attempted to ride the wave of DeepSeek and hired an army of influencers inside and outside of China, especially inside, to hype it up as the second coming of DeepSeek, even though they didn’t target the Chinese domestic market (as you correctly pointed out). IIRC it quickly became a joke in about two weeks after it became obvious that they were a thin layer on top of Claude and all marketing. I don’t know how they maneuvered into the current acquisition (feasting on Zuck’s fomo?), but saying “they always have great reputation in the AI industry” is laughable. This kind of garbage damages your reputation by loose association, you should be mad at them, not commenters.

Edit: Actually, the announcement doesn’t say anything about valuation, so it’s not even clear it’s a successful exit.

[bigcat12345678]

I don't get it

Riding a wave of industry is literally the foundation of startups paradiam itself. Why it suddenly became a sin for a Chinese founded startup?

This is exactly the disgusting bias (even to the point of racism) I mostly pointed out.

It's like everyone automatically applied double standards to Chinese founded startup and not even admit that under such influence.

[zingar]

> they attribute their success to morally inferior conduct

I’m not seeing accusations of morally inferior conduct here. Tech people like to dunk on marketing people no matter where in the world they are.

[tensor]

It has nothing to do with being Chinese. The fact that the founder with previous connections is exactly what people are suggesting is a problem.

I think China will beat the US in AI but absolutely not using this silicon valley style bullshit model of valuation. Companies like the one that produced Deepseek using cutting edge academic research to do more with vastly less are hat will win. New algorithms will beat money. And the US has abandoned science, and thus it will lose.

[bigcat12345678]

If it has nothing to do with being Chinese founded, then why it stated obviously baseless statements without objections until myself pointed out the facts. I mean, manus is top tier by any measure in the startup scene, and someone just say that it's a joke, then sane people's immediate reaction should be asking why, right?

Why suddenly it becomes automatically accepted, other than being a Chinese founded startup, tell me, what else can prompts such mental inconsistency?

[danieltanfh95]

Please. Manus had a live demo in Google Expo 2025 in Singapore and they blew it. It was such bad taste.

Manus had 1 marketing gimmick with the agents. That is no longer anything novel.

[bigcat12345678]

A failed demo discounted a entire 100mm arr?