🍭 The $2B Deal That Got Un-Done 🔥

Good morning. If your AI tells you you're a genius today…
just know it told me that too.

Let’s dive in 👇

🍭 What’s Cookin’:

• Meta’s $2B AI deal gets blocked mid-flight

• OpenAI misses targets as rivals catch up

• Anthropic stress-tests election safety ahead of midterms

Meta
🛑 Bought Manus. China Said No.

The Bite:

China's National Development and Reform Commission ordered Meta to unwind its $2 billion acquisition of Manus, the Chinese-founded AI agent startup that relocated to Singapore last year.

The deal was announced in December, and Meta had already integrated Manus into its internal systems, onboarded its executives, and paid out its investors.

Beijing launched a probe in January, and on Monday issued a one-line statement blocking the foreign acquisition and demanding both parties to withdraw.

Meta said the transaction "complied fully with applicable law" and that it anticipates "an appropriate resolution."

It is unclear how a completed acquisition gets unwound in practice.

Snacks:

• Manus was founded in China and moved to Singapore in July 2025 after a $75M round led by Benchmark

• Meta announced the $2B acquisition in December, and began integrating Manus immediately

• Beijing banned both Manus co-founders from leaving China

• On Chinese social media, users called the sale "treacherous" after the startup shut down its offices in China

• The blocked deal lands weeks before a planned Trump–Xi summit in Beijing

• Meta earns over $18B annually from Chinese advertising on its platforms

Why it Bites:

This is what "decoupling" looks like when it stops being a policy paper and starts being a phone call.

Manus did everything a startup should to go global:

• moved to Singapore,

• raised from U.S. VCs,

• found a buyer willing to pay $2 billion.

And Beijing still reached across borders, after the fact, to pull the plug on a deal that was already done. Employees onboarded. Investors paid. Systems integrated.

None of it mattered.

The slightly absurd part is that unwinding this might be physically impossible.

Meta has had months to absorb Manus's data, models, and team.
Ordering them to "withdraw" is a bit like asking someone to un-read a book.

But Beijing isn't really trying to get the technology back.
It's making an example.

The message to every Chinese AI founder with global ambitions is:

You can leave, but we decide whether you get sold.

Now, if Chinese AI startups can't exit to U.S. buyers:

• fewer will get built with that exit in mind.

• the talent stays domestic or leaves earlier and more quietly.

The cross-border AI deal market simply splits into two separate ecosystems that stop talking to each other.

And since Meta’s sitting on $18 billion in annual Chinese ad revenue…

…it doesn't have the leverage to push back, even if it wanted to.

Steal This Prompt
🖍️ Crayon Drawing For People With Taste

Turn any subject into a soft, waxy, childlike crayon illustration.
Basically “fridge art,” but make it weirdly usable.

Use it to:

• Make playful product or mascot art

• Create nostalgic social graphics

• Turn boring ideas into kindergarten-core bangers

Workflow:

1. Click this link (Prompt)

2. Paste into your AI model

3. Replace the #s with your subject

4. Watch it cook up scribbles your inner child would absolutely put on the fridge

   Try the prompt on Snack Prompt

_ToolBox™
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Spin up a full AI “company” where agents collaborate, execute tasks, and actually ship work while you watch it live.

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Dump your tasks and it auto-plans your entire week around your life—calendar, priorities, and sanity included.

_{Everything Else}
🧠 You Need to Know

🤝 NEC Becomes Anthropic's First Japan-Based Global Partner
→ NEC will deploy Claude to 30,000 employees and jointly develop sector-specific AI products for finance, manufacturing, and local government.

📉 OpenAI Misses Revenue And User Targets
→ The WSJ reported OpenAI fell short of internal growth goals as Anthropic and Google gained ground, dragging Oracle down 7.7% and CoreWeave 7.4% on the news.

🏛️ EU AI Act Delay Talks Collapse After 12 Hours
→ EU negotiators failed to agree on postponing high-risk AI deadlines, leaving the original August 2, 2026 compliance date legally in force with a follow-up session set for May.

🚫 China Blocks Meta's $2B Manus Acquisition
→ Beijing ordered Meta and the Chinese-founded AI startup to unwind the completed deal, even though Manus employees have already joined Meta and investors were paid out.

🛡️ Anthropic Publishes Election Safeguards Ahead Of U.S. Midterms
→ Opus 4.7 scored 100% appropriate responses on a 600-prompt election benchmark and refused nearly every autonomous influence operation task with safeguards enabled.