2026-02-17 · signal
From 2M waitlist to $100M ARR to acquisition. The AI agent that replaced entire departments.
Meta just acquired Manus AI for an estimated $2-3 billion. The company launched in March 2025, hit a 2M waitlist in days, and reached $100M ARR in 8 months. Other AI tools handle tasks; Manus handled jobs. A 240-hour professional research project took 10 minutes; an entire marketing department's weekly workflow ran on one agent. It grew the fastest AI agent community ever at 186,000 Discord members. The AI agent market just got its first mega-exit; expect every big tech company to be acquiring agent startups over the next 12 months.