In the early morning of March 6, it was another sleepless night in the technology circle after DeepSeek. Everyone was fascinated by a product called Manus.
Demonstration video that made Manus "blow up the screen" overnight
Affected by this, in the early trading on March 6, the Internet, software, computers, ERP concepts, AI agents and other sectors also broke out collectively. Among them, the ERP concept surged by more than 7%, with a net inflow of nearly 3.6 billion yuan in early trading, and the AI intelligent rose by 5.6%, with a net inflow of more than 4.8 billion yuan.
Who is Manus?
Chinese team releases the world’s first
Universal AI Agent product Manus
Manus is a general-purpose AI Agent product released by Chinese startup Monica.
According to the team, Manus achieved SOTA (State-of-the-Art) results in the GAIA benchmark test, showing that its performance surpasses Open AI's large models of the same level.
Chinese artificial intelligence firm Manus AI launched a general AI agent, Manus, on Thursday, and it quickly went viral on social media, with many referring to it as "the second disruptor after DeepSeek" and calling it "the GPT moment" for AI agents.
It is reported that this is the world’s first truly universal AI Agent. Officials claim that Manus is not just a conversational AI tool that can only chat, but a truly autonomous agent.
Judging from the introduction, compared with the current large-model products, as a general-purpose Agent, Manus is positioned as a powerful general-purpose assistant. It not only provides users with ideas, but also can put ideas into practice and truly solve problems.
AI agents are autonomous intelligent systems performing specific tasks without human intervention.
Manus said that based on the GAIA Benchmark, a standard for general AI assistants, its tool has achieved state-of-the-art performance across all three difficulty levels, surpassing OpenAI's models.
Manus comes from the Latin Mens et Manus, which means mind and hand. In other words, knowledge must not only be in the brain, but also be executed with the hands. This is the essential advancement of Agent and AI Bot (chat robot) products.
Moreover, unlike previous artificial intelligence assistants with relatively simple functions, Manus is no longer limited to a single task, but can understand complex instructions, learn independently, collaborate across fields, and truly think and act like a human being.
Ji Yichao, the company's co-founder and chief scientist, said that Manus can be regarded as a general intelligence that can turn ideas into actions, rather than just a chatting AI tool; Manus shows the next generation paradigm of human-machine collaboration, "giving you an early glimpse of AGI."
"This isn't just another chatbot or workflow tool," said Ji Yichao, co-founder and chief scientist at Manus AI. "It's a truly autonomous agent that bridges the gap between conception and execution."
"Where other AI stop at generating ideas, Manus delivers results," he said, adding that the team has been quietly building what it believes is the next evolution in AI.
Can analyze stocks and organize invoices
What was synchronized in Manus was a case demonstration demo that lasted more than 4 minutes. It is reported that this video was also co-created by Renhe and Manus.
In these cases, Manus assumed different roles and completed the entire process from planning to execution.
The video on the website dedicated to Manus also says the AI agent is more advanced than a chatbot because it doesn't only generate ideas but delivers tangible results, such as producing a report.
Including but not limited to: personalized travel planning, stock analysis, educational course development, insurance policy comparison, B2B supplier procurement, financial report analysis, company list compilation, online store operation analysis, event explanation chart production, candidate interview arrangement, potential customer search, and press conference teleprompter production…
Human Resources HR: Screen resumes and issue reports
For example, start with a common HR task—screening resumes. The demonstration started with a big trick. The official sent Manus a compressed file containing 10 resumes. Manus could work as efficiently as a professional recruiter.
It will first unzip the file, then go through each resume page by page and record important information. Manus can also process files asynchronously, which means you can shut down your computer at any time and it will notify you when the task is completed.
During this process, you can also give it new instructions at any time. Then continue to upload 5 resumes to Manus. After carefully reading all 15 resumes, Manus made ranking recommendations and provided candidate information and evaluation criteria for reference.
This is not over yet, we can also let Manus generate a spreadsheet. Because Manus has knowledge and memory capabilities, the next time it performs a similar task, it will deliver the results directly in the form of a spreadsheet.
Stock Analyst: Multidimensional Analysis + Visual Presentation
In another case, Manus transformed into a professional stock analyst.
Asking it to analyze the correlation between the stock prices of three companies over the past three years, Manus can access authoritative data sources through APIs. After validating the data, it starts writing code for data analysis and visualization.
After completing the data analysis and visualization, Manus can also create a website based on the data. With the user's authorization, the website can be deployed online and a shareable link is provided.
You can also make PPT, organize invoices…
AI popular science expert "Kazik" said he was "shocked" after using Manus to successfully complete tasks such as making PPT and sorting out invoices.
Workers who often travel on business will probably accumulate a bunch of messy invoices that need to be reimbursed by the company. But before the reimbursement is received, a lot of organizing work needs to be done, such as making an excel template to facilitate financial reconciliation.
If this task is given to Manus, it can be done in a few minutes: unzip the invoice folder – create an OCR program to extract the message information of all invoices – organize the invoice data according to the reimbursement form format – generate a filled out reimbursement form. It also classifies and organizes according to office supplies, planes and wine, travel, etc., and calculates the total amount. What you have to do is download the excel sheet it organizes for you.
Overall, the biggest difference between Manus and previous AI tools is that it has the ability to simulate human working methods and can plan independently to ensure task completion.
The whole Internet is asking for it, and the invitation code has been raised to 50,000.
After Manus became popular, the entire Internet was asking for invitation codes, causing the official website registration page to crash.
In comments on social platforms involving the topic of Manus AI, netizens are asking for invitation codes. Leave a message "Requesting an invitation code" because this preview product is not yet fully open and can only be experienced through an invitation code.
"We are still looking for the invitation code, but at present, it seems that it does not have the ability to actually execute it, and is still operating in a browser-like manner. We still have to take a closer look at where their circle of competence is." A developer said in the group communication.
Currently, the trial requires an invitation code, but the Manus invitation code is even harder to find. On second-hand trading platforms, many netizens are looking for invitation codes, but there are only a few sellers selling them. The price of the invitation code ranges from 999 yuan to 50,000 yuan. A seller with an asking price of 50,000 yuan said he would not accept bargaining. "This is the current market price. The quantity is too small and it is very rare."
As of Thursday, the so-called Manus invitation codes were being resold for nearly 50,000 yuan on the second-hand trading platform Xianyu.
The Manus AI team issued a response
Due to Manus's invitation-only internal testing restrictions, many users were unable to experience this AI Agent. This move was also questioned as "hungry marketing + shell hype."
This afternoon, Zhang Tao, partner of Manus AI, wrote in response: "The invitation code mechanism is currently adopted because the server capacity is really limited at the moment. It is a last resort and the team has stayed up all night to work on it. I hope that more users on the waitlist can experience Manus first in the next time." Zhang Tao said, "I urge everyone to be more tolerant and understanding of a startup company with dozens of people. The team is doing its best to let everyone experience better products as soon as possible."
Previously, he also issued a clarification on social platforms:
1. We have never opened any paid channels to obtain invitation codes;
2. We have never invested any marketing budget;
3. The system capacity is limited during the internal testing period. We will give priority to ensuring the core experience of existing users and gradually release invitations in an orderly manner.
Therefore, friends who are eager to experience it must be careful not to be deceived.
The founder is a serial entrepreneur born in the 1990s
Public information shows that the founder behind Manus is a serial entrepreneur born in 1992 named Xiao Hong.
In 2015, he started his business after graduating from Huazhong University of Science and Technology majoring in software engineering. In 2015, he founded Nightingale Technology, launched Yiban Assistant and Weiban Assistant, and received investments from Tencent, ZhenFund and others.
According to database firm Tianyancha, Manus' founder, Xiao Hong, established the company in 2015 but exited as a shareholder in December 2024. Following his departure, shareholders including Tencent's venture capital firm increased their registered capital contributions.
In 2022, the wave of AI large models began to rise, and Xiao Hong founded Monica to focus on overseas markets. This is an All-in-One AI assistant. When users click on its icon in the browser, they can directly use the major mainstream models it is connected to to help users improve their chat, search, writing and programming experience. In 2024, the number of Monica users will reach 10 million.
Co-founder Ji Yichao is also a post-90s programmer and entrepreneur. According to limited public information on the Internet, he is the founder of Peak Labs and a ZhenFund EIR (Entrepreneur In Residence). He once created a model called Steiner to reproduce the reasoning capabilities of OpenAI o1.
