Manus AI 100m Usd Arr
Posted8 days agoActive6d ago
manus.imStartup Launchstory
excitedpositive
Debate
20/100
Manus AIArr MilestoneAI-Powered Support
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Manus AI
Arr Milestone
AI-Powered Support
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40m
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25
2-4h
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9
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Dec 28, 2025 at 2:45 AM EST
8 days ago
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Dec 28, 2025 at 10:33 PM EST
6d ago
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ID: 46409245Type: storyLast synced: 12/28/2025, 8:55:29 AM
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What is it with AI companies and buttholes? https://velvetshark.com/ai-company-logos-that-look-like-butt...
And their logo is, lo and behold ... a hand!
Btw, this reminds me the red hot logo, which is a ass hole too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manus_(AI_agent)
Is this the capacity most people are using Manus in? I'd imagine it's the higher level stuff.
I understand that many industries will take years to adopt. Fine. But about sub-sectors in tech—gaming, design, data? What is happening beyond "make software development easier"? Is it because ChatGPT like apps are enough for most people?
Just a faster horse.
The other issue is that the value is more or less all in the LLMs (at the minute). For example, I built a data engineering toolkit using LLMs, it created synthetic data from examples, it created ingestion pipelines given different source filed and a target, it created data test rules. I liked my little toolkit and some people were impressed, but the value was all in the models that underpinned it. The crust of clever bits that added value was thin, very thin. Ok, we used the llms to generate some python that then created the synthetic data and testing rules to reduce costs, we had three or four "agents" that worked together to create the pipelines. We decorated target code with open provenance code to create provanance... But just by saying these things or letting you use the toolkit and you seeing what it made - that's enough for any half competent person to relicate it (with AI assistance) in an afternoon, or maybe a couple of afternoons. Maybe.
So, to create a viable company is going to take significant effort (if you can think of a value add) because the value add still has to be real.
One of the most common questions is "can I build on xyz and shift to abc because I do not want to pay?" And another is "can I host the code myself?"
Customers know they do not need to stay with any of these code builders. The platforms know it too. They spend tons of $ to get customers, who use the credits and then leave.
Manus is running $5000 credit for 2000 people. A simple search shows so many offers: https://x.com/search?q=ManusAI%20credits&src=typed_query
Each of the players are just eating each others customers and showing growth. Perplexity has acquired who knows how many customers in India through their 12 month free Pro offer via Airtel (a telecom provider): https://www.perplexity.ai/help-center/en/articles/11842322-p...
Wow.
Do these tools require training to use? Are they not really designed such that a 5 year old can use it? "build me a thing that does Y" style.
How would this work though? They give out free "credits" and then claim usage of those as ARR? That would be outright fraudulent, no?
Who is paying for those "Manus Credits"?
Now that’s a pretty good incentive to drive up ARR, no matter how.
Welcome to the world of creative accounting! One-time projects? Count as ARR! 3 months contract with no extension? Count as ARR. You gave a discount of 50% for the first year? Make sure to count the full price as ARR!
I'll let GenAI complete that one.
It saddens me that we're making gezillions in complete hype businesses while people work their butts off for pebbles.
They all sold $100 bills with discount before either capturing market or disappear.
This just doesn't smell right overall.
Often the decision maker is not the person using the software, and it's much easier to convince the key decision maker that holds the cheque book to sign for that first year. That's just the first hurdle, you then need to get folks at the company to actually use the product and derive enough value from it to justify year 2.
Not sure how the Manus plans break down, and they do "including usage-based and other revenue," so I guess that shows customers actually using the tool which is a proxy for end-users finding it useful and deriving value from it.
A more tasteful way of championing the success of the product would be to focus on DAU growth, or showing that users that use the product, heavily use it. There tends to be a bimodal distribution of AI use, and there's a learning curve where a once-a-day user will suddenly flip to an 8 hours per day user. Feels like the key metric for an AI-focused company (outside of new customer acquisition) should be "how effectively can we move users from the dipping-the-toe-in-the-water bucket to the I-can't-do-my-job-without-this bucket."
> Let Manus handle the work — you focus on the decisions
As a general comment I am getting tired of AI wishy washy slop. Just tell me how you crunch the tokens and benefits. The marketing has gotten cliche.