GuShiio.com Wen| Alphabet List, Author| Bi Andi, Editor| Zhao Jinjie
When I woke up this morning, I was flooded with news from Manus.
Thinking it was a shocking explosion, he opened the computer to search with trembling hands, but found that the English media was as quiet as chickens and there were no reports on the world’s first universal Agent.
Isn’t it said that the entire technology circle has insomnia and Silicon Valley is crying?
On social media like X, there is indeed a lot of discussion, but it is more about Chinese self-media. Before press release, there was indeed a discussion in English, with many praise. I also saw that foreigners also began to ask for invitation codes, but they also mentioned the names of other AI agent products, and some people pointed out the limitations of Manus.
On the other hand, on a second-hand trading platform in China, people have already sold Manus invitation codes at high prices, ranging from several thousand yuan to 160,000 yuan. Manus officials made it clear that the invitation codes released by XX and other platforms were false information, reminding users not to believe it.
Judging from the official demonstration and trial videos posted by a few third-party users, Manus is indeed a quite powerful AI agent product, and the experience may even be better than the products launched by some major model companies.
The team behind it had previously launched another product, Monica.AI, that has withstood market testing. The founder Xiao Hong is a post-90s generation, graduated from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and is a serial entrepreneur.
AI agents have become an area where various AI vendors are fighting fiercely. OpenAI also launched its first AI agent product, Operator, a month ago, and is currently available in some countries to Pro subscribers.
The latest piece of news is that The Information said that OpenAI is planning to launch different levels of AI agents, among which doctoral agents may charge US$20,000 per month.
The time when this report was released was also the time when Manus claimed to blow up the AI circle.
An association will naturally appear in front of your eyes:
At the beginning of this year, DeepSeek blew up the AI circle, and the small-cost reasoning model allowed the entire Silicon Valley to reassess the path of the big model. Liang Wenfeng, born in the 1980s from China, posed a problem for OpenAI’s Sam Ultraman.
So now, is there another post-90s Xiao Hong from China who has severely interrupted Ultraman’s AI proxy dream?
Excitement is understandable, but don’t get too excited yet.
Let the bullets fly a little longer.
01
Let’s start with the Manus product itself.
Official introduction: Manus is a universal AI agent that connects thought and action: it not only thinks, it also delivers results. Manus is good at handling various tasks at work and life and can complete everything while you are resting.& rdquo;
AI agents are no stranger to everyone. Unlike ordinary chat robots, they can really help you do many things.
As far as Manus is concerned, in the official example, you can drop it a zip package containing 10 resumes (yes, you don’t need to decompress them), and Manus can unpack the files himself, browse the files page by page and sort out the key points, write Python scripts to generate corresponding tables, and finally complete the analysis of job seekers ‘resumes.
During the entire process, users can see Manus’s entire thinking and execution process on one side of the interface, while all operations on Manus’s computer(running in the cloud) are displayed on the other side. Judging from the video of the demonstration, the overall process is smooth. Whether it’s decompressing, compiling Python now or directly generating Exel tables, it’s all very eye-catching.
In addition, the official also gave other examples, such as recommending New York properties within the budget and conditions given by users (low crime rate, high-quality educational resources, etc.). In this example, you can see that Manus first disassembled and planned the task himself.
According to reports, Manus tried out the Multiple Agent architecture and ran multiple different agents in the virtual machine, such as planning agents, execution agents, verification agents, etc.
Currently, Manus is not open to everyone, and you need to obtain an invitation code to use it. Invitation codes are not easily available, so many people ask for a code on social media. At about 1 pm Beijing time on March 6, Manus was no longer able to open the login interface, suspected that the influx of users exceeded the load and caused a jam.
The team that made Manus did have two skills.
One of the founders, Xiao Hong, is a post-90s generation and graduated from the School of Software of Huazhong University of Science and Technology with a bachelor’s degree. Ji Yichao, who appeared in Manus’s official video to give a speech this time, is also the co-founder and chief scientist of the company. He is also born in the 1990s and became famous when he was young. The Mammoth Browser he developed attracted investment from Zhenge Fund. At the age of 19, Ji Yichao also appeared on the cover of the Chinese edition of Forbes.
The team’s previous representative work was the AI browser plug-in Monica, which focused on AI assistants. As of July 2024, there are 4 million users.
02
Manus bombed the AI circle and the GPT moment when he opened the AI agent, etc., it is impossible to tell how it first appeared.
But what is certain is that Manus is really popular in China.
Putting aside the news side, let’s take the most intuitive invitation code.At about 3 p.m., Face-to-Face AI (ID: facaibang) had already seen someone selling Manus invitation codes on the second-hand trading platform, and the price was increased by 30,000 to 160,000 yuan.
It is conceivable that such a phenomenon is based on the Manus bombing site AI circle mentioned above and even the news that made Silicon Valley insomnia. Many people have even called it the next DeepSeek.
Whether Manus will become the next DeepSeek is not yet known, but what is certain is that at least for now, Silicon Valley should eat, drink and sleep, and has not been blown to the point of dizziness.
Until 3 p.m., we searched Google again using Manus as the keyword, but there were still only five related news items, and no major media such as Bloomberg, The Information, Business Insider, and Reuters followed up.
On social media X, there are already some Chinese news discussing Manus, but not to the extent of being overwhelming.
For example,@AshutoshShrivastava, which has 40,000 followers, also posted a video of Manus 12 hours ago. Later, he said that he received the invitation code and thanked Manus officials. He said that he had tested it last night and it was very good, but he was too sleepy and didn’t record anything. He then released several more messages, but none of them had anything to do with Manus.
Interestingly, after the news about Manus, he immediately shared Ali QwQ-32B and said: China will one day open source AGI for all mankind. rdquo;
Still the same sentence: Manus is good, but it seems that it hasn’t yet let the world go.
Pang Shunxin, co-founder of HashMatrix, also immediately shared the joy of trying Manus, but also said: The Demo is cherry-pick, which is actually not that amazing, but the horizontal comparison is really great.” rdquo;
Zengyi Qin also expressed his views. He is studying for a PhD at MIT and also starting a business. He is the head of AI R & D at MySell (the company raised $11 million last year, with investors including Transformer authors).
He also first affirmed the product itself: Manus is an excellent product. This is obvious and I don’t need to say more. rdquo;
But he believes that Manus is not a technological breakthrough for three reasons:
a. It mainly performs tasks according to the preset process. This preset process significantly limits the system’s performance limits, although it does make the system run better in the short term.
b. It works in a relatively restricted environment, somewhere between browser-only and operating system levels. It cannot run outside of predefined software tools. For example, it cannot control PowerPoint to make slides for you. In fact, much of the software is outside Manus ‘toolbox.
c. If Manus is not a technological breakthrough, what is it? The answer is: a system that can run in a completely open operating system-level environment, perform most tasks, and operate software like humans is a technological breakthrough.
03
The AI agent track is very lively, and large model manufacturers have already taken action.
For all to C users, OpenAI has Operator, and Anthropic has launched Artifacts and Computer Use functions. In addition, Google, Microsoft, and large domestic model manufacturers also have AI agents.
OpenAI’s Operator performs tasks in the cloud based on user instructions, such as ordering meals, making plans, shopping, etc.
Anthropic’s Artifacts allow users to generate code snippets, text documents, or website designs during a conversation, and display these results in a dedicated window next to the conversation with one click. Computer Use allows AI to use a computer like a human, viewing the screen, moving the cursor accurately, clicking buttons at the required locations, and using a virtual keyboard to enter text.
Further actions are still on the way.
The Information reported that OpenAI executives told some investors that the company plans to launch agents at different prices for different users: $2000 per month for high-income knowledge workers;$10,000 per month for software development; and doctoral research agents,$20,000 per month.
People familiar with the matter also revealed that in the long run, OpenAI expects 20% to 25% of the company’s future revenue to come from agency products.
Many people talk about Manus and mention another product, Devin. This is a vertical product similar to Manus. It will be launched in 2024. It has also become famous once it debuts, and is even called the first AI software engineer.
But this year, Devin’s luster has faded, with criticism for performing poorly on most tasks, such as people discovering that what they could do in half an hour would take six hours to Devin.
Many companies that do AI applications will do AI agents around various vertical tracks. Manus is not a big model manufacturer but has not done a vertical agent. His courage is commendable, and it will be even more gratifying if it still performs well after being fully launched into the market. But this is also the same point, coupled with the extreme flattery from the outside world, which makes people sweat.
AI agents for all users are bound to be pursued by large model manufacturers. Will Manus’s living space be squeezed?
This seems to return to the controversy between Zhu Xiaohu and Fu Sheng two years ago: Can starting a business around GPT succeed?
Now this question can be further added: Can it be possible to do AI application level entrepreneurship around areas where large model manufacturers are likely to fully enter the market?
AI applications relying on mainstream models continue to emerge, and there are countless good products, but painful cases are also common.
Jasper, a SaaS company for advertising marketers, self-media bloggers and other groups, was once valued at US$1.5 billion and became the first batch of unicorns to take off with the big model. However, the following year after ChatGPT was released, Jasper AI’s space was constantly squeezed and its scenery was no longer around.
Not long ago, Xiao Hong, founder of the team behind Manus, was interviewed by media person Zhang Xiaojun. When asked: Will the original factory do the Agent thing or the application company do it?” rdquo;
Xiao Hong replied: I think the original factory is worth doing, but it seems that the original factory is not doing well enough.& rdquo;
There is no need to criticize Manus. Pang Shunxin, who said that Manus was actually not that amazing, then spoke out on X, opposing the outside world ‘s accusation that Manus had no deep technical barriers, saying that products are useful technology, and the fig leaf of useless products is called technology, so don’t look down on engineering and products.
I hope that in the future, Manus product can leverage the soft figure of the application layer and find differentiated advantages in competing with the original factory.
But at this stage, let’s not praise it.
