On the evening of August 11, Manus posted an open letter to users on its official website announcing that it would "soon resume operations as an independent company." The same letter confirmed another thing: as part of returning to independent operations and complying with the regulatory requirements of a specific jurisdiction, the company would delete part of the user data generated on or after December 29, 2025 — the day Meta's acquisition of Manus closed. A US$2 billion acquisition undone, with the bill eventually landing on user data — the cutting line drawn at the acquisition-closing date.
I. Why the Cutting Line Falls on December 29
From a legal-concept standpoint, "data generated after December 29 belongs to Meta" is not quite accurate — personal data is not corporate property in the ordinary sense. The rights of the data subject, the identity of the platform controller, and the scope of the enterprise's processing permissions have to be assessed separately.
But viewed through the lens of the reversed transaction, that date has a special significance: those data were generated after Meta completed the acquisition and obtained control of Manus, entering the relevant business system. Manus's choice of December 29 as the cutting line can be read as a data-isolation measure within the unwinding process — the data relationships formed during the acquisition period have to be reprocessed, rather than carried along without distinction as the company reasserts its independence.
The analysis by Guancha (a Chinese current-affairs commentary outlet) points out that this should not be read as a routine database migration. The core arrangement is "back up first, then delete, then restore": affected users can back up their data before 7:59 a.m. on August 23; Manus deletes between 8:00 a.m. on August 23 and August 24; restoration begins after 8:00 a.m. on August 25. A direct delete would mean months of accumulated user data disappearing permanently, with users almost certain to walk away. The backup–delete–restore path completes the data cutoff of the old system while preserving the user relationship.
II. Timeline of the Reversed Transaction
- March 2025 — Manus debuts positioned as "the world's first autonomous AI Agent"; about eight months after launch, its ARR crosses US$100 million
- December 2025 — Meta acquires Manus for US$2 billion
- April 2026 — The Office of the Foreign Investment Security Review Working Mechanism under China's National Development and Reform Commission issues a prohibition ruling and orders the transaction unwound
- May 2026 — Manus and Meta complete operational separation; data sharing ceases
- July 2026 — Bloomberg reports that Tencent, together with Sequoia China and ZhenFund, plans to buy Manus back from Meta at the original price of RMB 13.6 billion
- August 2026 — Manus announces the resumption of independent operations; data deletion executed on August 23–24
III. After the Cutting Line — Reshuffling the AI Agent Track
Manus's user letter promises "a series of new features" to come, but Guancha's reading is more cautious: Meta had planned to deploy Manus across its consumer and enterprise products; after the deal was stopped, it released its own first coding agent. In the Chinese market, Tencent, Alibaba, and Zhipu have rolled out agent products of their own, "completely flattening Manus's first-mover advantage."
The reborn Manus is still an AI service aimed at global users, with data storage in the United States and Singapore — what the transaction "unwind" restores is the corporate-control relationship and the business-operations relationship, not a geographic relocation of the data infrastructure. What is worth watching next: who, once independent, becomes responsible for processing user data; whether cross-border data-transfer mechanisms change; and whether the privacy policy is adjusted to reflect the new operating posture.
What this transaction leaves the industry is not an example of an acquisition that failed, but an operational template for "what to do with data after a deal is unwound": the cutting line falls on the date of the change of control; a three-stage backup–delete–restore transition; data-subject rights treated separately even when a deal collapses. When a deal fails in the AI era, what is being liquidated is not just the equity — it is the data relationships.