Manus Moves HQ to Singapore

The move to Singapore was less about office geography and more about changing which markets, partners, and investors Manus could credibly work with. By 2025, Manus had become a fast growing consumer AI agent with users in Japan, the Middle East, and the U.S., while Benchmark’s $75M investment was under U.S. Treasury review because Manus was still seen as a Chinese AI startup. Reestablishing headquarters in Singapore, alongside a U.S. entity and China team shutdown, helped Manus present itself as a global company rather than a China bound one.1 2 3 4

• Manus had real reason to make the shift. Internal research shows the company closed its Beijing and Wuhan offices, laid off local staff, moved founders and HQ to Singapore, and incorporated a U.S. entity. That is a full corporate reset, not just a mailing address change.1 2
• The timing lines up with financing pressure. Benchmark led Manus’s April 2025 Series B at a $500M valuation, and by May 9, 2025 the deal was reportedly under Treasury review for compliance with U.S. rules on certain China related AI investments. A Singapore HQ made future fundraising cleaner.3 4
• The relocation also mattered for product supply. Anthropic’s policy says entities incorporated or headquartered in unsupported regions cannot use Claude, and Manus depended on external frontier models and tool integrations rather than its own model stack. For an agent product, model access is core infrastructure.1 5 6

Going forward, this points to Manus competing as a Singapore based global agent company, not as a China domestic lab. That should make it easier to sign partners, buy model access, and raise Western capital, while putting more pressure on the company to prove its edge comes from product execution and distribution, not geographic arbitrage.1 2 5