Manus

Manus Cloud Computer gives the company's general AI agent a persistent virtual machine in the cloud, so tasks and applications kept by the agent continue running even when the user closes their laptop or puts down their phone. Behind Manus is a multi-agent system that executes real-world workflows end to end, with prompts going first to a planner agent that decomposes them , and each Sandbox is a fully isolated cloud virtual machine that Manus allocates per task, running in its own environment with networking, a command line, a file system, and a browser . The launch matters because Manus has been positioning itself less as a chat interface and more as an operating environment, and an always-on cloud machine is the piece that lets agent-built workflows behave like real software rather than one-off sessions. The product is aimed at builders and operators who want an agent to handle multi-step work without babysitting a local process. In Manus 1.5, full-stack web application development became a major capability, letting users build and deploy production-ready web apps through conversation, with the integrated browser actively testing what it builds . With Cloud Computer, those generated apps and long-running jobs can stay live around the clock, accessible from the Manus mobile app or web version, so users can start on a laptop, make updates from a phone, and deploy changes from a tablet . Manus is built by Chinese startup Butterfly Effect, founded by CEO Red Xiao Hong, who has described the agent as more like a human being than a chatbot , and chief scientist Yichao "Peak" Ji, the 32-year-old who introduced the product in its launch video . The underlying system runs on existing LLMs including Anthropic's Claude and fine-tuned versions of Alibaba's Qwen , and the team has been iterating quickly on features like wide research, desktop integration, and now a permanent cloud runtime for whatever its users decide to build.