Butterfly Effect
蝴蝶效应
Butterfly Effect is a Chinese AI startup founded by Red Xiao (肖弘), best known as the parent company of Monica and Manus, the latter being a widely followed AI agent product that ZhenFund described as "defining the agent product form of the AI era" . The team, which traces its roots to a 2016 hackathon at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, operates without training its own models and instead competes on user insight and product engineering . In late 2025, Meta announced it would acquire Butterfly Effect in what ZhenFund called Meta's third-largest acquisition to date, after WhatsApp and Scale AI; post-merger, the company is expected to continue independent operations while integrating deeply with Meta's core consumer products . ZhenFund, an early backer, has backed Xiao across a decade of ventures including Butterfly Effect's first angel round .
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Coverage
Manus Team Joins Meta: A Decade-Long Journey for a Group of Young People
A deep understanding of users and exceptional product engineering ability are what truly scarce in this era.
真格基金·Starting with Five Investments in Manus Founder Red Xiao: A Conversation with ZhenFund Partner Yuan Liu on How Reading People Evolves
十字路口Crossing·Behind the Manus Hype: 20 Questions to Help Us Understand AI Agents
十字路口Crossing·From Methodology to Real-World Experience: What Linear Capital's "AI/SaaS Going Global" Sharing Session Covered
On the afternoon of May 10, Linear Capital and Global SaaS/AI community Linkloud co-hosted the "AI/SaaS Global Expansion Meetup" as scheduled. We received an overwhelming number of registrations for this event — thank you again for your interest. Due to venue capacity constraints and the closed-door nature of the session, we're sharing select highlights from the gathering here.
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