Manus, an “agentic” AI platform that launched in preview last week, is generating more hype than a Taylor Swift concert.

The head of product at Hugging Face called Manus “the most impressive AI tool I’ve ever tried.” AI policy researcher Dean Ball described Manus as the “most sophisticated computer using AI.” The official Discord server for Manus grew to over 138,000 members in just a few days, and invite codes for Manus are reportedly selling for thousands of dollars on Chinese reseller app Xianyu.

But it’s not clear the hype is justified.

excellent https://t.co/TfeV9QZ1d0

— jack (@jack) March 9, 2025

Manus wasn’t developed entirely from scratch. According to reports on social media, the platform uses a combination of existing and fine-tuned AI models, including Anthropic’s Claude and Alibaba’s Qwen, to perform tasks such as drafting research reports and analyzing financial filings.

Yet on its website, The Butterfly Effect — the Chinese company behind Manus — gives a few wild examples of what the platform supposedly can accomplish, from buying real estate to programming video games.

In a viral video on X, Yichao “Peak” Ji, a research lead for Manus, implied that the platform was superior to agentic tools such as OpenAI’s deep research and Operator. Manus outperforms deep research on a popular benchmark for general AI assistants called GAIA, Ji claimed, which probes an AI’s ability to carry out work by browsing the web, using software, and more.

“[Manus] isn’t just another chatbot or workflow,” Ji said in the video. “It’s a completely autonomous agent that bridges the gap between conception and execution […] We see it as the next paradigm of human-machine collaboration.”

But some early users say that Manus is no panacea.

Alexander Doria, the co-founder of AI startup Pleias, said in a post on X that he encountered error messages and endless loops while testing Manus. Other X users pointed out that Manus makes mistakes on factual questions and doesn’t consistently cite its work — and often misses information that’s easily found online.

Deep Research finished in under 15 minutes. Unfortunately, Manus AI failed after 50 minutes at step 18/20! 😑 It was performing quite well-I was watching Manus’ output & it seemed excellent. However, running the same prompt a second time is a bit frustrating as it takes too long! https://t.co/bGtmOI65CP

— Derya Unutmaz, MD (@DeryaTR_) March 8, 2025

My own experience with Manus hasn’t been incredibly positive.

I asked the platform to handle what seemed to me like a pretty straightforward request: order a fried chicken sandwich from a top-rated fast food joint in my delivery range. After about ten minutes, Manus crashed. On the second attempt, it found a menu item that met my criteria, but Manus couldn’t complete the ordering process — or provide a checkout link, even.

Manus similarly whiffed when I asked it to book a flight from NYC to Japan. Given instructions that I thought didn’t leave much room for ambiguity (e.g. “look for a business-class flight, prioritizing price and flexible dates”), the best Manus could do was serve up links to fares across several airline websites and airfare search engines like Kayak, some of which were broken.

Hoping the next few tasks might be the charm, I told Manus to reserve a table for one at a restaurant within walking distance. It failed after a few minutes. Then I asked the platform to build a Naruto-inspired fighting game. It errored out half an hour in, which is when I decided to throw in the towel.

Honest opinion after trying Manus AI for the last 3 days, here’s the good and the bad.

Good:
– The research it does on the internet and the reports it generates are incredible.
– Its ability to run scripts behind the scenes to execute tasks is impressive.
– The plans it…

— AshutoshShrivastava (@ai_for_success) March 9, 2025

A spokesperson for Manus sent TechCrunch the following statement via DM:

“As a small team, our focus is to keep improving Manus and make AI agents that actually help users solve problems […] The primary goal of the current closed beta is to stress-test various parts of the system and identify issues. We deeply appreciate the valuable insights shared by everyone.”

So if Manusis is falling short of its technical promises, why did it blow up? A few factors contributed, such as the exclusivity created by a scarcity of invites.

Chinese media was quick to tout Manus as an AI breakthrough; publication QQ News called it “the pride of domestic products.” Meanwhile, AI influencers on social media spread misinformation about Manus’ capabilities. A widely-shared video showed a desktop program, ostensibly Manus, taking action across multiple smartphone apps. Ji confirmed that the video wasn’t, in fact, a demo of Manus.

Other influential AI accounts on X sought to draw comparisons between Manus and Chinese AI company DeepSeek — comparisons not necessarily rooted in fact. The Butterfly Effect didn’t develop any in-house models, unlike DeepSeek. And while DeepSeek made many of its technologies openly available, Monica hasn’t — at least not quite yet.

To be fair to The Butterfly Effect, Manus is in very early access. The company claims it’s working to scale computing capacity and fix issues as they’re reported. But as the platform currently exists, Manus appears to be a case of hype running ahead of technological innovation.

Updated 6:02 p.m. Pacific: Added a statement from a Manus spokesperson and corrected a misidentification of the company behind Manus.

Creatopy, a startup that uses AI to automate the creation of digital ads, has brought on a new CEO: Tammy Nam.

Nam was previously COO and CMO at photo-editing startup PicsArt, and before that the CEO of video streamer Viki. She told TechCrunch via email that Creatopy was looking for a US-based executive who knows how to scale early-stage startups, has worked with European founders (the product was first developed in Romania), and understands marketing tech.

“Fortunately, I fit that bill,” she said.

Nam is also joining the Creatopy board, while the startup’s previous CEO Dan Oros has stepped into an advisory role.

The startup announced a $10 million Series A led by European VCs 3VC and Point Nine last year. In a statement, 3VC partner Eva Arh described Nam as “one of the best operators I know.”

Between February 2024 and February 2025, the company claims to have grown mid-market and enterprise revenue by 400%, with much of that growth coming in the past six months. Customers include AstraZeneca, NASCAR, and The Economist.

“What’s remarkable about Creatopy — especially for a relatively unknown company — is our ability to land major enterprise customers in demanding industries like pharma and banking,” Nam said.

She added that customers love the product for “our intuitive interface, unique product capabilities, and excellent customer service.” In fact, she suggested that as large language models become “ubiquitous,” Creatopy differentiates itself based on its “ability to understand customer needs and deliver — perhaps ironically — high-touch value on top of the AI.”

Nam also described brand safety as a “top priority,” with marketing managers uploading brand kits during account setup, and those kits ensuring that every AI-generated ad adheres to their brand guidelines.

“Our AI doesn’t replace strategic thinking; it amplifies it,” she said. “Some of our customers have reported a 10x or more increase in productivity because we eliminate the tedious, manual work of generating hundreds of ad variations across sizes, formats, languages, etc.”

Elon Musk lost the latest battle in his lawsuit against OpenAI this week, but a federal judge appears to have given Musk — and others who oppose OpenAI’s for-profit conversion — reasons to be hopeful.

Musk’s suit against OpenAI, which also names Microsoft and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as defendants, accuses OpenAI of abandoning its nonprofit mission to ensure its AI research benefits all humanity. OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit in 2015 but converted to a “capped-profit” structure in 2019, and now seeks to restructure once more into a public benefit corporation.

Musk had sought a preliminary injunction to halt OpenAI’s transition to a for-profit. On Tuesday, a federal judge in Northern California, U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, denied Musk’s request — yet expressed some jurisprudential concerns about OpenAI’s planned conversion.

Judge Rogers said in her ruling denying the injunction that “significant and irreparable harm is incurred” when the public’s money is used to fund a nonprofit’s conversion into a for-profit. OpenAI’s nonprofit currently has a majority stake in OpenAI’s for-profit operations, and it reportedly stands to receive billions of dollars in compensation as a part of the transition.

Judge Rogers also noted that several of OpenAI’s co-founders, including Altman and president Greg Brockman, made “foundational commitments” not to use OpenAI “as a vehicle to enrich themselves.” In her ruling, Judge Rogers said that the Court is prepared to offer an expedited trial in the fall of 2025 to resolve the corporate restructuring disputes.

Marc Toberoff, a lawyer representing Musk, told TechCrunch that Musk’s legal team is pleased with the judge’s decision and intends to accept the offer for an expedited trial. OpenAI hasn’t said whether it’ll also accept and did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

Judge Rogers’ comments on OpenAI’s for-profit conversion aren’t exactly good news for the company.

Tyler Whitmer, a lawyer representing Encode, a nonprofit that filed an amicus brief in the case arguing that OpenAI’s for-profit conversion could jeopardize AI safety, told TechCrunch that Judge Rogers’ decision puts a “cloud” of regulatory uncertainty over OpenAI’s board of directors. Attorneys general in California and Delaware are already investigating the transition, and the concerns Judge Rogers raised could embolden them to probe more aggressively, Whitmer said.

There were some wins for OpenAI in Judge Rogers’ ruling.

The evidence Musk’s legal team presented to show that OpenAI breached a contract in accepting around $44 million in donations from Musk, then taking steps to convert to a for-profit, was “insufficient for purposes of the high burden required for a preliminary injunction,” Judge Rogers found. In her ruling, the judge pointed out that some emails submitted as exhibits showed Musk himself considering that OpenAI might become a for-profit company someday.

Judge Rogers also said that Musk’s AI company, xAI, a plaintiff in the case, failed to demonstrate that it would suffer “irreparable harm” should OpenAI’s for-profit conversion not be enjoined. Judge Rogers was also unpersuaded by the plaintiffs’ arguments that OpenAI’s close collaborator and investor, Microsoft, would violate interlocking directorate laws and that Musk has standing under a California provision prohibiting self-dealing.

Musk, once a key supporter of OpenAI, has positioned himself as one of the company’s greatest adversaries. xAI competes directly with OpenAI in developing frontier AI models, and Musk and Altman now find themselves jockeying for legal and political power under a new presidential administration.

The stakes are high for OpenAI. The company reportedly needs to complete its for-profit conversion by 2026, or some of the capital OpenAI recently raised could convert to debt.

At least one former OpenAI employee is fearful of the implications for AI governance should OpenAI successfully complete its transition. Speaking to TechCrunch on the condition of anonymity to protect their future job prospects, the ex-employee said they believe the startup’s conversion could threaten public safety.

Part of the motivation behind OpenAI’s nonprofit structure was to ensure that profit motives don’t override its mission: ensuring AI research benefits all of humanity. However, if OpenAI becomes a traditional for-profit company, there may be little to stop it from prioritizing profit above all else, the former employee told TechCrunch.

The ex-employee added that OpenAI’s nonprofit structure was one of the main reasons they joined the organization.

Just a few months from now, it should become clearer how many hurdles OpenAI will have to overcome in its for-profit transition. Regulators, AI safety advocates, and tech investors will be watching with great interest.