Manus Goes Viral Overnight: The General AI Agent Whose Invite Codes Sold for Thousands

Chinese startup Butterfly Effect launched Manus on March 6, 2025: given a task, the general-purpose AI agent autonomously completes multi-step work — research reports, resume screening, trip planning — while showing its full execution process.

The invite-only launch went viral overnight: the waitlist reportedly topped 2 million, invite codes resold for hundreds to thousands of dollars, and 'breakthrough or hype' debates swept both Chinese and English tech circles. It pushed the idea of a general agent into the mainstream.

Manus has since iterated to version 1.6 and gone global. Whatever the early controversy, 2025 became known as 'the year of the agent' — and Manus's breakout was one of its defining moments.

The Controversy, Revisited: Wrapper Accusations and the Product Answer

The loudest post-viral critique was 'wrapper': Manus trained no base model of its own, instead engineering task planning, tool orchestration and execution environments on top of third-party models. In hindsight, that is precisely its biggest lesson: in a window where model capabilities converge, orchestration and product experience are themselves the moat — the transparency of showing the full execution process later became standard interaction across agent products. The invite-code scarcity play left its own lesson too: waitlists manufacture buzz, but task completion rates are what retain users.

Our Take

Manus's breakout timing was delicate: it came right behind the starting gun of OpenAI's Operator and Deep Research (see our coverage), using consumer-grade virality to push 'general agent' from professional circles into mainstream debate. The industry's subsequent evolution validated both the value and the limits of the route: once MCP unified the tool-access layer and model vendors built agent capability into their own entry points (see our MCP coverage and agent framework review), independent agent startups had to dig into vertical scenarios to stay differentiated. Manus's arc — from viral phenomenon to disciplined global operations — is the sector's shift from narrative-driven to product-driven in miniature.