Meta is reportedly acquiring the Chinese founded AI company, Manus, in its effort to enhance the capability of its technology.
Bloomberg commentators and The Wall Street Journal speculated that the buy out could be valued over $2bn (£1.48bn).
Meta described the acquisition as helping to improve its own AI because it will allow people to use "agents," which are tools that can carry out complex tasks with very little human input like planning routes and creating slide shows.
“Manus's incredible talent is going to be part of Meta's team for building general purpose agents for our consumer and business products, including Meta AI,” stated a blogging post.
"It was a natural fit for Meta, and it expanded into the boss's vision of personal AI," said analyst Barton Crockett of Rosenblatt Securities to Reuters.
The Singapore based organization, which previously operated in China, has aimed to differentiate itself in the market for AI system developers in that it can offer "a truly autonomous" agent.
Whereas most chatbots require being asked for things multiple times before a desired response is given by a user, according to Manus, their service is capable of planning and performing tasks on their own as per instructions given.
This is a subset of the company’s mission to "extend human reach" through the deployment of general purpose agents to supplement the efforts of humans.
The firm said that being acquired by Meta was “validation” of their work.
“Through joining Meta, we now get to continue building on a stronger, and much more sustainable, foundation without having to alter Manus or its decision making process,” Xiao Hong, its CEO and China born founder, explained on its blog.
"We are very excited about what the future holds with Meta and Manus partnering together and we will continue to evolve our product and serve users who have made Manus what it is from the very inception."
Meta stated that as part of the agreement, it would continue to develop and sell the AI service of Manus.
This is the latest in a string of high profile acquisitions by the tech giant in a bid to solidify its position in the industry through partnerships with promising start ups.
In June, $14bn was used by the company to acquire a 49% stake in Scale AI with its boss being hired for a key role at Meta’s development of this technology.
This is in the wake of an increasing spend by Zuckerberg on the AI strategy for the company and also hiring away experts from rivals such as OpenAI.
