Manus AI, an agentic AI platform developed by Chinese startup Butterfly Effect, announced on Wednesday that it is now partnering with Microsoft’s Azure AI Foundry.
The Azure AI Foundry provides a unified platform for enterprises to access AI models, tools, and services.
“Today, Manus’s muscle comes from Azure AI Foundry. By running on Foundry’s enterprise-grade backbone, Manus gains world-class AI agility, rock-solid security, and limitless scale,” Tao Cheung, co-founder of Manus AI, said.
Manus AI is a general purpose AI agent capable of autonomously planning, executing, and delivering comprehensive results while navigating websites in real time and processing various data types. It employs multiple tools to achieve these outcomes. As per the GAIA benchmark, which tests general AI assistants on solving real-world problems, Manus outperformed OpenAI’s Deep Research. The platform also announced image generation capabilities last week.
Last week, the platform opened up for public registration, moving away from its waitlist-based system. It also announced one free daily task for all users, and a one-time bonus of 1,000 credits to try out the platform. Manus offers a basic plan starting at $19 a month, a Plus plan for $39 a month, a Pro plan at $199 a month, and a Team plan.
Last month, Bloomberg reported that Butterfly Effect secured $75 million in funding from a US venture capital firm, Benchmark. Soon after, Semafor reported that the US treasury department is evaluating the investment. According to unnamed sources cited by Semafor, Benchmark has been asked whether the investment is affected by new restrictions on investments in AI and other critical technologies intended for countries of concern.
This is based on the Outbound Investment Security Program introduced by former US President Joe Biden. This requires entities to notify the treasury department about investments in areas such as AI that could undermine the country’s interests.
