Another DeepSeek moment? General AI agent Manus shows ability to handle complex tasks

A general artificial intelligence (AI) agent developed by a low-profile team backed by Chinese investors and developers has quickly gained attention in the AI community for its ability to handle complex, real-world tasks.

Manus, currently available as an invitation-only web preview, can execute practical tasks such as creating a custom website through a step-by-step process, according to a demonstration video on its website manus.im.

The website also listed tasks that can be done by the Manus AI agent, which include devising an itinerary for a trip to Japan, providing an in-depth analysis of Tesla’s stock, creating an interactive course for middle-school teachers, comparing different insurance policies and assisting in business-to-business supplier sourcing, among others.

It also claims that Manus can outperform OpenAI’s Deep Research based on the GAIA benchmark, a third-party measure of general AI assistants.

While Manus has provided little information about its corporate structure, its team and underlying models for the agent, the demo video has triggered massive interest.

The video, published on X on Wednesday night (Mar 5), had received over 200,000 views by noon Thursday, with many comments asking for an invitation code to try the agent.

The sudden popularity of Manus among the AI community is similar to the buzz that followed the launch of DeepSeek’s R1 reasoning model in January.

A general-purpose AI agent, which can interact with its environment, collect data and use the data to handle tasks to meet predetermined goals, is widely seen as the future of AI applications.

Based on its demo, Manus is able to autonomously browse websites, leverage various capabilities and display its workflow in real-time. The product is being described by its developer as “a general AI agent that bridges minds and actions: it doesn’t just think, it delivers results”.

The demo video is hosted by “Peak” Ji Yichao, a 33-year-old Chinese entrepreneur and tech enthusiast who created the mobile browser Mammoth and founded Peak Labs in the United States.

According to sources in China’s venture capital industry, the team behind Manus previously developed Monica AI, a popular AI assistant with millions of users that was capable of integrating various large AI models.

Monica is available as a browser extension and as an app across mobile and desktop platforms. The founding team of Monica includes Xiao Hong, a serial entrepreneur and 2015 graduate from Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

This article was first published on SCMP.