The creator of Chinese general-purpose artificial intelligence (AI) agent Manus is working with Alibaba Group Holding’s large language model (LLM) team to develop a Chinese version of the application, after it quickly rose to fame over the past few days.
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Manus will engage in strategic cooperation with Alibaba’s Qwen team “to meet the needs of Chinese users”, the company said in a statement on Tuesday. The two companies are working closely to make sure that all Manus functions are available on “domestic models and computing platforms”, according to the statement, which did not specify a launch date.
A representative from Alibaba’s cloud computing unit confirmed the cooperation, saying both parties are collaborating on open-source models, adding that it looks forward to “working with more global AI innovators”. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
The announcement came as Manus, developed by Tencent Holdings-backed start-up Butterfly Effect, has caught the AI community’s attention at home and abroad, following its invitation-only online preview last week, which showed that it can execute various practical tasks such as creating a customised website.
AI agents are programmes that are capable of autonomously performing tasks on behalf of a user or another system. These agents create a plan of specific tasks and subtasks to complete a goal using its available resources.
The start-up’s commitment to applications demonstrates another avenue for innovation by a Chinese AI start-up, following DeepSeek’s recent breakthrough in building and training AI models at a fraction of the cost and computing power typically required by bigger tech firms.
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Manus was built on existing LLMs, including Anthropic’s Claude and fine-tuned versions of Qwen, Butterfly Effect co-founder and chief scientist Peak Ji Yichao said in a Monday post on X.