In Depth: AI Agents Trigger the Next Tech Battlefield in China

AI agents are apps that turn thoughts into outcomes. Their arrival has caused an investor frenzy but how will they evolve?

First came DeepSeek, the Chinese model that stunned the global artificial intelligence (AI) community with its performance and efficiency. Now, another name is making waves — not for building bigger models, but for giving AI a face, a memory and, perhaps, a role in your daily life.

The company is called Butterfly Effect Pte. Ltd., and its product, Manus, is being hailed as the first truly autonomous AI agent to enter the mainstream.

In a sleek English-language demo video released in March, cofounder and chief scientist Ji Yichao introduced Manus as “the first general-purpose AI agent — not just another chatbot or workflow automation tool, but a system that can turn thoughts into outcomes.”

In the video, Manus autonomously reads and ranks job applications, outputs structured candidate tables, and explains its criteria. The implication: Manus doesn’t just assist — it acts.

Though Manus has only launched overseas, the video — subtitled and shared widely on Chinese social media — caused immediate excitement. Beta invite codes began appearing on secondhand platforms such as Xianyu, priced at thousands, even tens of thousands of yuan. In a nation already electrified by generative AI, Manus felt like a leap.

Ji is no Stanford PhD or AI heavyweight. He is a repeat product founder and self-taught developer, first gaining attention in high school and college with a mobile browser app that racked up more than half a million App Store downloads. He later founded Peak Labs, launched a knowledge engine and secured backing from Sequoia Capital before the company was acquired in 2022.

Before Manus,