A powerful new AI tool Manus is making waves in China, fuelling hopes that it could replicate the success of DeepSeek, which earlier this year rattled the global tech industry with its state-of-the-art chatbot.

Manus, an “agentic” artificial intelligence platform, launched in preview last week, capturing significant attention in the tech community. Developed by Monica, a Chinese startup, Manus promises to revolutionize human-machine collaboration.

Some early users were enthusiastic about the product’s capabilities; others complained it took too long and crashed.