Meta

In December 2025, Meta paid more than $2 billion for Manus, a Singapore-based agent startup founded in China by Xiao Hong: the third largest acquisition in the company's history, after WhatsApp and Scale AI. The deal required Manus to relocate out of China, and Meta to sever operational links and data flows with China and buy out the Chinese investors. It remains under CFIUS review. Xiao Hong joined as vice president, and the agent technology is slated for WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram.

Eight months later, on 10 August 2026, Mark Zuckerberg published a roughly 6,500-word manifesto on meta.com, The Future is for Everyone. Its claim: Meta is "the only company mainly focused on personal superintelligence for everyone", as against labs building for enterprises, governments and institutions. The case against a single benevolent superintelligence rests on one premise, humanity is not a monoculture, so safety becomes a question of how power is distributed. Zuckerberg's heaviest inference sits at the end: if billions of people use and scrutinize personal agents, alignment is solved.

The commitments are checkable and mostly unchecked. An independent board that approves model release criteria, at a company its founder controls. A fully private mode where "even Meta" cannot grant access. Free tiers for billions, plus a dynamic auction for paid compute. Resumed open source releases. A $50,000 bonus to Richland Parish teachers in Louisiana funded by datacenter tax revenue, self-reported and unaudited. Water-positive by 2030, returning 200% in water-stressed areas. Sourcing in the manifesto is near zero.