anus AI's 'de-China playbook is a trap

Rebranding bid: The website for the Manus AI agent arranged on a computer in Hong Kong.Manus is doing everything it can to sever any ties to the mainland while its parent company Butterfly Effect reportedly eliminated all its China-based jobs last week. —Bloomberg

WHEN Chinese startup Manus previewed an artificial intelligence (AI) agent earlier this year, it went mega-viral. It came on the heels of DeepSeek, when global excitement over China’s AI breakthroughs was at a fever pitch, and nobody wanted to miss out on the next surprise hit.

Now, Manus is doing everything it can to sever any ties to the mainland. It relocated its headquarters to Singapore, and its three co-founders have made the move abroad as well.

Butterfly Effect, the company behind Manus, reportedly eliminated all its China-based jobs last week.

It has also scrubbed content from domestic social media platforms Weibo and Xiaohongshu (also known as RedNote), despite maintaining an active presence on X.

Users in China trying to access the site this week were met with the message that it’s “not available in your region,” a departure from a previous memo stating that the Chinese version was under development.

It’s the choice these tech firms are forced to make in the current geopolitical climate: stay in the hyper-competitive domestic market or go for more lucrative growth overseas. You can’t have both.

Moving abroad means going through the arduous process of trying to “de-China” the company’s origins.

It’s a shame given this background is what drove so much hype about Manus in the first place.

Chinese firms have also traditionally had an edge in consumer tech, with access to a vast pool of affordable engineering talent and a hardworking culture. Plus, dubious identity rebrands almost never work.

Manus’ decision to recast as a Singapore company follows the furore that emerged in the United States after prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist (VC) firm Benchmark (an early backer of the likes of eBay Inc and Uber Technologies Inc) announced it was leading a US$75mil funding round in Butterfly Effect.

Fellow VCs accused Benchmark of “investing in your enemy” and equated it to backing Russian efforts during the space race.

The plans have also come under US Treasury Department scrutiny over new rules related to investments in certain Chinese technology.

It will be very hard for Manus to ever rid the China label from its story, especially after all the attention it received.

Co-founder Ji Yichao was on the cover of Forbes China more than a decade ago, as one of the 30 under 30 entrepreneurs in the country. State-backed mouthpieces have also celebrated Manus’s rise, so trying to cleanse its Chinese-ness risks domestic backlash.

It’s not the first time this has happened. ByteDance Ltd’s TikTok has gone to great pains to rebrand as an American and Singaporean company and assuage Washington’s fears about its Beijing origins. But none of this stopped the United States from passing a law last year requiring the parent company to divest from the app that doesn’t even operate in the mainland, or be banned due to perceived national security concerns. This doesn’t bode well for Manus.

The AI sector has become a lightning rod for China hawks in the United States, who view any consumer-facing application using the tech from its geopolitical nemesis as a threat.

AI video startup HeyGen Inc garnered investment and a raft of US customers after making the move from China, yet was still singled out by lawmakers over potential ties to the Communist Party.

Its co-founder said it’s been “disappointing” to see his heritage treated as something he should “be ashamed of.”

Wrapped up in national security worries is more than a hint of xenophobia.

Targeting consumer tech firms based on the national origins of their founders is an ineffective strategy.

US concerns about potential threats that data could leak to China or that the CCP could influence algorithms should implement more comprehensive rules to mitigate these risks.

When it comes to buzzy new technology like the Manus AI agent, industry-wide standards are overdue.

Tools that are designed to allow software to take on increasingly complex tasks on their own carry unique risks, including who is liable when things go awry and how much control should be ceded to machines.

Global policymakers should address these concerns regardless of where the AI agent comes from.

Icing out the best and brightest tech minds risks leaving Silicon Valley blind to innovation happening elsewhere. It’s in America’s interest to do more to support these founders by bringing their talents and breakthroughs to the United States. —Bloomberg

By Catherine Thorbecke,  is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia tech. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.

Muar-born Tan Lip-Bu is new CEO of Intel

New Intel Corp CEO Tan Lip-Bu. — Photo courtesy of Intel

PETALING JAYA: Malaysian-born Tan Lip-Bu (Americanised to Lip-Bu Tan) has been appointed chief executive officer (CEO) of troubled technology firm Intel Corp, effective March 18, with many industry observers aching to see what strategies the new boss has in place to turn around the chip giant.

He takes over from Pat Gelsinger, three months after the company veteran was forced out by Intel’s board because his costly and ambitious plan to improve the firm’s performance was seen as faltering and sapping investor confidence.

Notably, Tan’s appointment will also attract the attention of Donald Trump, with the US president eager for Intel to rebound in his push for more manufacturing in the country, threatening tariffs on imports that have roiled global markets for weeks.

Independent analyst Jack Gold told Reuters that Tan would be able to leverage his experience and especially his industry connections, while pursuing excellence within Intel. 

“Hopefully the board will stay out of his way as he makes the necessary changes,” Gold said.

Tan moves in the same social circle as Lisa Su from Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, two artificial intelligence (AI) chip leaders who, according to Reuters, had been pitched to invest in Intel.

Born in Muar in 1959, Tan grew up in Singapore and was educated there, graduating from Nanyang University with a Bachelor of Science degree, majoring in Physics. He later completed a Master of Science in nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States.

Now a naturalised American, Tan began his doctoral studies in nuclear engineering at MIT, before moving to the University of San Francisco in California, where he graduated with a Master of Business Administration and founded venture capital firm Walden International in 1987.

A former Intel board member himself, he had been seen as a contender for the CEO’s post thanks to his deep experience in the chip industry and his status as a long-time technology investor in promising startups.

For example, he took a stake in Annapurna Labs, a startup later purchased by Amazon.com Inc for US$370mil that has become the heart of its inhouse chip division.

He also invested in Nuvia, which Qualcomm bought for US$1.4bil in 2021, making it a central part of its push to compete with Intel in the laptop and PC chip markets.

Tan remains actively involved with startups that could either become competitors or acquisition targets for Intel, exemplified by the fact that earlier this week he invested in AI photonic startup Celestial AI, which is backed by Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices.

In a letter to Intel employees on Wednesday, Tan said: “Together, we will work hard to restore Intel’s position as a world-class products company, establish ourselves as a world-class foundry and delight our customers like never before.”

Intel shares surged 12% in extended trading on Wednesday, and analysts welcomed the move which they said was likely to bring some stability to the chipmaker.

The company’s stock had declined by 60% in 2024.

From 2009 to 2021, Tan was CEO of Cadence Design Systems, a chip design software firm whose fortunes he revived by focusing Cadence around supplying the software for sophisticated designs and partnering closely with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), which from its founding days swore it would focus only on manufacturing.

During Tan’s time at Cadence, the firm’s stock appreciated 3,200% and it landed Apple as one of its largest customers, as the iPhone maker shifted away from suppliers such as Intel and toward its own chips.

Cadence’s tools also became central to chip industry firms such as Broadcom, which helps Google, Amazon and others design their own AI chips and have them made by TSMC.

“He did a really good job of pointing (Cadence) in the right direction. Cadence really aligned itself with TSMC – they saw them as a leader and the go-to shop,” Karl Freund, an analyst with Cambrian AI Research, told Reuters.

Intel is undergoing a historic transition as it attempts to emerge from one of its bleakest periods.

While struggling to cash in on a boom in investment in advanced AI chips that has fired up the fortunes of market leader Nvidia and other chipmakers, the company is spending heavily to become a contract manufacturer of chips for other companies, leading some investors to worry about pressure on its cash flow.

Source link