Manus AI lays off China staff, scrubs social media, shelves mainland service

The start-up has relocated to Singapore with an eye on overseas clients and funding amid heightened US-China tensions

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Manus AI says it has started restructuring its operations after relocating to Singapore. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 8:00pm, 15 Jul 2025

The company behind the general-purpose artificial intelligence (AI) agent Manus laid off most of its staff in Beijing last week, according to local media reports, amid a reorganisation in line with relocating its headquarters to Singapore.

Manus AI has also scrubbed all of its content on Chinese social media platforms Weibo and RedNote.

Logging in returns this message: “Manus is not available in your region.” That marked a change from the earlier message that said its “Chinese version is under development”.

“To improve operational efficiency, we’ve decided to restructure some business teams,” a statement from the start-up said in response to the lay-offs. “The company will continue focusing on its core product and enhancing overall performance.”

Manus did not explain its rationale for pulling out of China. In an earlier statement to the Post, Manus said the move to Singapore was not about gaining access to Nvidia’s advanced chips because it was not developing AI models.

Manus did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

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