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In a one-line statement, China's National Development and Reform Commission, the country's top planning agency, said it was prohibiting a foreign acquisition of Manus and had required all the parties to withdraw from the deal. It did not specifically name Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook and Instagram.
The decision was made by the commission's Office of the Working Mechanism for Security Review of Foreign Investment in accordance with Chinese laws and regulations, the statement said. ...
Meta announced in December that it was acquiring Manus, which has Chinese roots but is based in Singapore, in a rare case of a major U.S. tech group buying an AI company with strong links to China. Its deal with Manus, whose "general-purpose" AI agent can perform multistep complex work autonomously, was expected to help expand AI offerings across Meta's platforms. ...
See the full story here: https://www.npr.org/2026/04/27/g-s1-118892/china-blocks-meta-from-acquiring-ai-startup-manus