Xiao Hong: From Small Town Youth to Manus CEO, a Long-Term Believer in Bitcoin

Jan 07, 2026 21:50:20

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Zuckerberg has dropped a deep-water bombshell, as Meta officially announced the completion of its acquisition of the AI startup Manus.

With a transaction price of several billion dollars, it has become Meta's third-largest acquisition in history, following WhatsApp and Scale AI.

In fact, even Instagram, which once reshaped the social landscape, may have to take a backseat in light of this acquisition's price tag.

After the acquisition, Manus founder Xiao Hong will serve as Vice President of Meta. However, what is most breathtaking is not just the price, but the speed.

According to reports, the entire acquisition negotiation took only about ten days. Liu Yuan, a partner at ZhenFund, remarked, "It's so fast that it even makes one wonder if this is a fake offer."

This "lightning war" pace is extremely rare in the history of mergers and acquisitions among Silicon Valley giants.

It feels more like a "bride-snatching" mission—perhaps Zuckerberg knows better than anyone that Manus is a ticket he must secure on the road to the future of agents.

1. The "Other-Dimensional" Time in a Small Town in Jiangxi

In 1993, Xiao Hong was born in a small town in Suichuan County, Ji'an City, Jiangxi Province. It is known as the "red core, tea capital, and hot spring town."

For the children of this small town, they either study hard to leap over the dragon gate or work to survive.

Xiao Hong wrote himself a third script: he liked to tinker with computers.

His family had an old desktop computer. While many kids used it to play games or watch movies, Xiao Hong often went online, exploring and experimenting with various software.

This became even more evident in high school, where he became passionate about using software and writing review articles.

In the "Other-Dimensional Software World" community, we can still see a lot of content he wrote. Among them, the earliest article, written in 2010, titled "GeeXBox: The Free Media System That Lets You DIY Your Own Portable Media Center Computer," has over 100,000 views.

"Wow, this is my (Xiao Hong's) first article in the Other-Dimensional world. It's definitely not as good as Xiao X's, but I hope everyone will like it."

At that time, he was still a high school student, writing software reviews, and achieving 100,000 views without any traffic pool or algorithm recommendations was already quite impressive.

Through those words, we might clearly capture two core underlying abilities that later contributed to his success: first, the ability to break down hardcore, complex technology into "human language" that even laypeople can understand; second, he knows what is cool and can make others feel, "This thing is really exciting."

This "let's try something fun" geek logic has remained unchanged for 15 years, from the media system in 2010 to Bitcoin in 2013, and now to Manus in 2024.

2. The "Message in a Bottle" from Huazhong University of Science and Technology—You Don't Need to Invent Demand

In 2011, Xiao Hong entered the Software Engineering program at Huazhong University of Science and Technology with a high score of 600 on the college entrance examination.

"From now on, our education level will no longer be higher than yours. From now on, all decisions in your life will be made by you." This was what Xiao Hong's parents left him with.

During his four years in college, Xiao Hong not only studied his favorite major but also embarked on his earliest entrepreneurial experiences.

According to an article from the WeChat public account "Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Huazhong University of Science and Technology," Xiao Hong was active in technical clubs during his time at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, joining the Qiming Academy "Co-Creation Team" and serving as vice captain.

In 2013, WeChat was just getting started. Xiao Hong led a team to create a "WeChat Message in a Bottle"—the Huazhong version of a campus message in a bottle. Users could reply "message in a bottle" to "throw a bottle" and write down what they wanted to say, which others would receive randomly; they could also "receive bottles," getting random messages from others and replying.

It sounds simple, but in that era, this kind of gameplay was quite novel.

In just three days after its launch, the reply volume on WeChat's backend reached 40,000, making it a favorite among many students. From the backend feedback data, requests for romantic partners and venting frustrations dominated the content of the message in a bottle.

A campus social product captured the most genuine needs of college students.

This entrepreneurial experience in college showcased Xiao Hong's keen insight into social needs and product experience, which was later validated in his product design.

You don't need to invent demand; you just need to accurately meet it.

3. Nightingale and Butterfly: The Romance of Xiao Hong

In 2015, the mobile internet was rapidly and vigorously developing. Most graduates from Huazhong University of Science and Technology could easily find jobs at large companies, but unlike his peers, Xiao Hong had already firmly decided to pursue entrepreneurship.

"I hardly heard of him applying for jobs or looking for work. He even rented a house with his partners, living and working there. He focused more on technological innovation, wanting to put his ideas into practice," said Xiao Hong's classmate, Xiao He.

In 2015, Xiao Hong founded Wuhan Nightingale Technology Co., Ltd. in Optics Valley, and the initial Nightingale was just "singing" in a small house in Wuhan.

The landlord even suspected that this group of young people was involved in pyramid schemes.

Xiao He pointed out that the name Nightingale comes from Oscar Wilde's "The Nightingale and the Rose."

"You can tell from the name of the company, Nightingale Technology and the Butterfly Effect; the former is taken from Wilde's story, showing he still has a bit of romantic sentiment."

Romance aside, reality never listens to Wilde's stories.

In that "gold rush era" of mobile internet, Xiao Hong's story began with a very clear "self-denial."

At that time, the WeChat ecosystem was still a wild land, yet Xiao Hong focused on application development and promotion within the WeChat ecosystem.

The first successful product was called Yiban Assistant—an enhancement plugin developed for WeChat public account editors, which remains a favorite among public account editors to this day.

But for Xiao Hong, this business was too "stable," to the point of being somewhat boring.

If you set your sights on the stars and the sea, you won't stay in a comfortable harbor for too long.

So in 2018 and 2019, his team went through some trial and error, creating small products like a family photo album mini-program, a live quiz mini-program, and a bookstore mini-program. Some of these products made a splash, while others barely made a ripple.

On November 28, 2019, the WeChat Work team held a service provider recruitment salon in Wuhan, which led to the birth of Weiban Assistant.

Tencent WeChat Work Vice President Li Zhifeng recalled at the 2021 SaaS conference: "That day, dozens of companies came, and among them was a young guy with a backpack. Others might have just passed by after listening, but he went back and decided to go all in on WeChat Work, developing based on its ecosystem, and wrote the first line of code that day."

The young guy he mentioned is Xiao Hong, CEO of Weiban Assistant.

At that time, Weiban's development was not smooth.

Although version 1.0 had just been launched, it immediately faced the pandemic. Worse still, the market was flooded with various external tools, making the compliant and restrained Weiban seem like a clumsy good child in comparison.

Perhaps thanks to Xiao Hong's persistence, a turning point arrived on May 25, 2020.

At that time, Tencent launched a large-scale cleanup of personal WeChat accounts, banning a large number of accounts, with some users having over 100 accounts banned, causing hundreds of thousands of customer resources to vanish in an instant.

At 3 a.m. the next day, Weiban Assistant published an article on its official WeChat account titled "Just Now, WeChat's Mass Ban! Customer Resources Instantly Reduced to Zero, What Should Private Domain Operations Do After WeChat's Auxiliary Tools Are Banned?" which garnered over 100,000 views the next day.

With the external tools banned, companies began to seek alternative products, and Weiban Assistant naturally met these demands, enjoying the benefits brought by WeChat's crackdown on external tools.

This experience is worth savoring. At the crossroads of short-term interests and long-term value, Xiao Hong always firmly chose the latter. This is not only courage but also a kind of cognitive confidence.

4. From Monica to Manus, the Butterfly Begins to Flutter

At the end of 2022, ChatGPT was born.

For ordinary people, it was a toy for chatting; but for Xiao Hong, it was a tombstone of the old era.

He began to establish the Butterfly Effect.

This time, his focus was no longer on WeChat but on the entry point of the internet—the browser.

In 2023, amidst a wave of AI shell companies emerging like mushrooms after rain, Monica appeared as a quietly miraculous company—one of the few that survived and thrived.

As of now, Monica has accumulated millions of active users globally, with its ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) rapidly surpassing ten million dollars.

Logically, he should be popping champagne, but he didn't.

Xiao Hong realized that while technological capabilities were constantly evolving, product forms often lagged behind.

"When making Monica, I found that 'context' is key, so I made the plugin automatically capture webpage information, eliminating the need for users to copy and paste. Later, Cursor became popular, proving that when the model's coding capabilities mature, chatbots are not the best product form; a carrier more aligned with the coding workflow is needed."

"At the end of last year, we saw the emergence of new capabilities like 'Agent' that can perform complex planning and autonomous execution, and we judged that it also lacked a good product form. This was our opportunity: to seize the window of model capability overflow."

This is the reason for the birth of Manus.

In Xiao Hong's view, the ultimate question is—what is the ultimate "shell" for AI?

His answer is: the computer. In the digital world, the computer is the terminal for humans to handle all affairs. Therefore, equipping AI with a dedicated computer theoretically allows it to complete all tasks like a human.

According to Manus's official introduction, the name Manus comes from the Latin "Mens et Manus" (Mind and Hand). However, Manus's hands were already in the eye of the public opinion storm at its inception.

Manus was launched on March 5, 2025. Prior to this, it had already become "top-tier traffic" in the tech circle—invitation codes were even sold for tens of thousands of dollars on second-hand platforms, making them hard to come by. However, just as the product was unveiled, public opinion took a sharp turn, and the overwhelming skepticism quickly drowned out the initial enthusiasm.

Many believed that Manus lacked significant innovation, merely being a shell product using foreign models. "It doesn't have its own large model; it's a product developed based on existing large models in the industry."

Some even wondered: why did such an exciting product come out, but the tech circle seemed to have little reaction, with only self-media reporting on it?

It can be observed that within a week of Manus's release, its reputation underwent a significant reversal. This was not only evident domestically but also showed severe polarization abroad.

Foreign media like TechCrunch reported that Manus might not represent China's second DeepSeek moment. However, shortly after Manus's release, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey stated that the product was excellent.

In the face of skepticism, the Manus team did not shy away from being a "shell." This in itself is not scary; the key lies in whether it can solve users' problems.

Just like product innovation and underlying technological innovation. Apple doesn't produce chips and screens, yet the iPhone remains the most successful smartphone.

Innovation lies in the system, interaction, and ecosystem, not in the hardware itself.

In April, the Series B financing led by Benchmark was completed, with a post-investment valuation of 500 million dollars; however, shortly after their investment, the U.S. Treasury Department initiated a review of Benchmark's investment in Manus to check for compliance with the 2023 restrictions on AI investments in China.

Some voices in Silicon Valley began to question: "A Chinese company using Anthropic's model and taking American money, is this compliant?"

Xiao Hong stood in a position that no one wanted to be in.

Regulations in the AI field between China and the U.S. tightened to a delicate critical point in the first half of 2025. Manus was caught in the middle: using Claude at the core, investors in Silicon Valley, users around the globe, and the company registered in Beijing.

Every link could potentially become a reason for being stuck.

He might only have two paths ahead:

The first path is to retreat to the domestic market and create a "Chinese version" of the AI agent. Safe, but the ceiling is clearly visible.

The second path is to proactively cut ties and transform Manus into a truly "global company." Painful, but it could go further.

Xiao Hong chose the second path.

No one knows how much pressure Xiao Hong endured during that time.

In 2015, he named his company "Nightingale"—the bird in Wilde's story that sings with its life and waters the rose with its blood.

Ten years later, he might understand the full meaning of this name.

To let this rose bloom globally, he had to sacrifice something.

This is not a runaway; it's a self-mutilation for survival.

But Manus did not stop there.

On May 12, Manus ended the invitation code model, opened registration to all users, and launched a subscription plan, with over a million users already on the waiting list before the opening.

From June to July, it was perhaps the most controversial phase for Manus. The co-founder of Manus confirmed that the headquarters would be relocated to Singapore. Starting from July 8, the Beijing Butterfly Effect company where Manus is located began layoffs. About 80 employees in the China region were laid off, and social media content on platforms like Weibo and Xiaohongshu was cleared.

During this time, the label of "runaway" was almost plastered all over Manus and Xiao Hong.

In October 2025, Manus released version 1.5, reducing the average task completion time from 15 minutes in April to less than 4 minutes.

In December, Manus announced that its annual recurring revenue (ARR) had surpassed 100 million dollars. It took less than nine months to go from commercialization to 100 million dollars ARR.

Looking back at the initial message in a bottle product, Xiao Hong had long realized that users actually do not care whose model you are using; they only care about one thing: can it meet my needs, can it help me get the job done?

Manus's answer is: yes.

5. You Didn't Expect It, But Xiao Hong is Also a Bitcoin Holder

That's right, on Xiao Hong's "Jike" personal homepage, in addition to founder, INFP, and tool maker, he has a simple identity: BTC Holder.

This is not a speculative label following the trend.

If you turn back the clock to 12 years ago, you will find that this sensitivity to new things has long been ingrained in his genes.

In November 2013, Xiao Hong, who had just entered university, wrote a popular science article in "Other-Dimensional Software World": "What is Bitcoin? How to Use It? Bitcoin Wallet Client Download."

In a year when Bitcoin had not yet entered the public eye, most people still viewed it as a "tulip bubble" or "geek's toy," but Xiao Hong had already posted his wallet address at the end of the article, writing, "Just buy a few bucks and put it in your wallet, see how cool it is."

Out of curiosity, I checked that address. In February 2014, the holdings in that address were worth only 0.793 dollars; today, 12 years later, that asset is worth 1969 dollars.

A 2482-fold increase!

That address has likely long been inactive, and that amount of money is insignificant for today's Meta Vice President, but the implications behind that number are astonishing: he is someone who can find and hold onto "the future."

This "holding" determination is vividly reflected in Manus's valuation curve.

At the beginning of 2024, when Monica had just begun to shine, ByteDance offered 30 million dollars to acquire it. For a post-90s entrepreneur, this was enough to achieve financial freedom, a perfect opportunity to "cash out."

But Xiao Hong refused.

Just as he once held Bitcoin through a long cycle of ups and downs, he recognized that the Agent was the true ticket to AI general intelligence. He chose to continue "holding" and keep running down that path.

Just a year and a half later, Meta knocked on his door with a multi-billion dollar offer.

From 30 million to several billion, the leap is not just in valuation magnitude but also the highest reward for long-termism.

Xiao Hong also stated in an article that he enjoys "trying new things" and likes "new things." But in fact, what he is truly good at is identifying those signals that have real vitality amidst the long noise.

Whether it was the small-town youth holding 0.7 dollars in Bitcoin 12 years ago or the Meta Vice President standing next to Zuckerberg with a net worth of billions 12 years later, his core has never changed:

Identify a future and then hold onto it like a belief.

"That way, you can directly feel Bitcoin; just buy a few bucks and put it in your wallet~ 'Bro, I'm a Bitcoin holder now,' see how cool that is."

In Conclusion

From a small town in Ji'an, Jiangxi, to a small house in Wuhan, and then to the spotlight in Silicon Valley, Xiao Hong's story may be telling us:

True innovation does not necessarily have to start from scratch to invent the wheel; it can also recombine existing elements to create products that truly solve problems.

Looking back at Xiao Hong's "Monologue of the CEO of Weiban" written in 2022, how could the past Weiban not be today's Manus?

Today's Weiban (Manus) still has a distance from everything mentioned above. To ensure they exist not just on paper, the members of this company must double their efforts. In this process, physical exhaustion, mental tension, and sometimes even the grievances of being misunderstood are inevitable.

At this time, just silently recite that phrase that has inspired countless people:

Per aspera ad astra, through this arduous journey, to reach the horizon.