BEIJING, March 7 – Chinese start-up Monica has unveiled an artificial intelligence (AI) agent called Manus, sparking widespread attention and discussions online, with some media comparing its launch to the rise of DeepSeek.
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV has boldly described it as the world’s first general AI agent, capable of autonomously and independently thinking, planning, and executing complex tasks.
“Manus is a general AI agent that bridges minds and actions: it doesn’t just think, it delivers results. Manus excels at various tasks in work and life, getting everything done while you rest,” it said on its website.
Monica claimed the AI agent can be applied to diverse tasks, including trip planning and stock analysis.
It also asserted that in GAIA, a benchmark for evaluating general AI assistants, Manus achieved state-of-the-art results across all difficulty levels, surpassing OpenAI’s models of the same level.
General AI refers to a type of AI that can perform any task a human can, whereas generative AI like ChatGPT is a specific tool designed mainly to generate text and answer questions within its trained knowledge.
A video introducing Manus by Ji Yichao, its co-founder and chief scientist, was viewed over hundreds of thousands times on X, formerly Twitter, within 20 hours of being posted.
“For the past year, we’ve been quietly building what we believe is the next evolution in AI, and today we’re launching an early preview of Manus, the first general AI agent,” Ji reportedly said, as quoted by Beijing-based The Global Times.
The name “Manus” is derived from the Latin phrase “Mens et Manus,” meaning “Mind and Hand,” reflecting the company’s vision of applying knowledge to practical tasks.
Currently, access to Manus is restricted, requiring an invitation code. CCTV reported that the scarcity of these codes has driven users to seek them on a domestic secondhand marketplace, where prices range from 999 yuan (RM606) to 50,000 yuan (RM30,500).
The founding team of Monica includes Xiao Hong, a serial entrepreneur and a 2015 graduate of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, according to the South China Morning Post.
In January, Chinese firm DeepSeek’s AI chatbot surged to the top of the Apple Store charts, surprising industry experts and challenging US tech giants like Nvidia and Meta in the competitive AI race.
