“The next DeepSeek”? Manus hasn’t woken up Silicon Valley yet

When I woke up this morning, I was greeted by " ManusThe message of "Swipe the screen" swept the screen.

Thinking it was a bombshell, I opened my computer with trembling hands to search, but found that the English media was as quiet as a chicken, with no reports on this "world's first universal agent".

Isn’t it said that the “entire technology circle” is losing sleep and Silicon Valley is in tears?

There are indeed a lot of discussions on social media such as X, but most of them are Chinese self-media. Before the release of this article, there were indeed discussions in English, with many compliments, and foreigners also asking for invitation codes, but they also mentioned the names of some other AI proxy products, and some people pointed out the limitations of Manus.

On the other hand, on a domestic second-hand trading platform, some people have been selling Manus invitation codes at high prices, ranging from a few thousand yuan to 160,000 yuan. This has caused Manus officials to "clearly declare that the invitation codes released by XX and other platforms are false information" and remind users not to believe them.

Judging from the official demonstration and trial videos released by a few third-party users, Manus is indeed a very powerful AI agent product, and the experience may even be better than the products currently launched by some large model companies themselves.

The team behind it had previously launched another product that has withstood the test of the market, Monica.AI. The founder, Xiao Hong, was born in the 1990s, graduated from Huazhong University of Science and Technology , and is a serial entrepreneur.

AI agents are already a hotly contested field among AI vendors. OpenAI also launched its first AI agent product Operator a month ago, which is now available in some countries and provided to Pro subscribers.

The latest news is that The Information said OpenAI is planning to launch different levels of AI agents, among which PhD-level agents may charge $20,000 per month.

The time when this report was released was exactly when Manus said it "blew up the AI ​​circle."

An association naturally comes to mind:

Earlier this year, DeepSeekThe low-cost inference model has caused the entire Silicon Valley to reevaluate the path to large models. Liang Wenfeng, a post-80s researcher from China, gave OpenAI's Sam Altman a difficult question.

So now, has there been another person born in the 1990s from China, Xiao Hong, who has snatched away Ultraman’s “AI agent dream”?

It's understandable to be excited, but don't get too excited yet.

Let the bullets fly for a while.

Let’s start with the Manus product itself.

Official introduction: "Manus is a general AI agent that connects thoughts and actions: it not only thinks, but also delivers results. Manus is good at handling a variety of tasks at work and in life, and can get everything done while you rest."

Everyone is familiar with AI agents. Unlike ordinary chatbots, they can really "take action" to help you do many things.

As for Manus, in the official example, you can throw a compressed package containing 10 resumes to it (yes, no need to decompress it), and Manus can decompress the file by itself, browse the file page by page and sort out the key points, write Python scripts to generate corresponding tables, and finally complete the analysis of the job applicant's resume.

During the whole process, users can see Manus's entire thinking and execution process on one side of the interface, and all operations in "Manus's computer" (running in the cloud) will be displayed on the other side. From the demonstration video, the overall process is very smooth. Whether it is decompression, Python programming or direct generation of Excel tables, they are all very impressive.

In addition, the official also gave other examples, such as recommending New York real estate within the budget and conditions given by the user (low crime rate, high-quality educational resources, etc.). In this example, you can see that Manus first disassembled the task and made a plan.

It is reported that Manus tried to use the "Multiple Agent" architecture to run a variety of different agents in the virtual machine to divide the work and collaborate, such as planning agents, execution agents, verification agents, etc.

Currently, Manus is not open to everyone. To use it, you need an invitation code. Invitation codes are not easy to get, so many people "ask for a code" on social media. At around 1:00 p.m. on March 6, Beijing time, Manus could no longer open the login interface, presumably because the influx of users exceeded the load and caused a freeze.

The team that made Manus is really talented.

One of the founders, Xiao Hong, was born in the 1990s and graduated from the School of Software of Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Ji Yichao, who appeared in the Manus official video, is also the company's "co-founder and chief scientist." He was also born in the 1990s and became famous at a young age. The Mammoth browser he developed attracted investment from Zhen Fund. At the age of 19, Ji Yichao was on the cover of the Chinese version of Forbes.

The team's previous masterpiece is the AI ​​browser plug-in Monica, which focuses on "AI assistant". As of July 2024, it has 4 million users.

It is impossible to determine how the inspiring descriptions such as Manus "blowing up the AI ​​circle" and the "GPT moment" that opened up AI agents first appeared.

But what is certain is that Manus is really popular in China.

Putting aside the news, let's take the most intuitive "invitation code" as an example. At around 3 pm, Zhimian AI (ID: faceaibang) saw someone selling the "Manus invitation code" on the second-hand trading platform, and the price was increased by 30,000 to 160,000 yuan.

When we asked as ordinary buyers, “Can’t it be any cheaper?”, the seller with the price tag of 160,000 yuan replied, “We are out of stock. There are a lot of people asking about it.

It is conceivable that this phenomenon is based on the news that Manus blew up the AI ​​circle and even made Silicon Valley "sleepless". Many people have even called it "the next DeepSeek".

It is not yet known whether Manus will become the "next DeepSeek", but what is certain is that, at least for now, Silicon Valley is eating, drinking and sleeping as usual, and has not been "exploded" to the point of being dizzy.

Until three o'clock in the afternoon, we searched "Manus" on Google again, and there were still only five related news reports, and no major media such as Bloomberg, The Information, Business Insider, and Reuters followed up.

On social media X, there have been some non-Chinese messages discussing Manus, but not to the point of being overwhelming.

For example, @AshutoshShrivastava, who has 40,000 followers, also posted a video of Manus 12 hours ago, and then said that he got the invitation code, thanked Manus officials, and said, "I tested it last night, it was very good, but I was too sleepy to record anything." He then posted several more messages, but none of them were related to Manus.

Interestingly, after sharing the news about Manus, he immediately shared Ali QwQ-32B and said: "China will one day open source AGI for all mankind.. "

Again, Manus is good, but it doesn’t seem to have taken the world by storm yet.