When Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Butterfly Effect scored a
US$2.5 billion (S$3.2 billion) deal
in December with Meta for its autonomous AI agent, Manus, its founders probably thought they had done everything right.
Just a year after founding the company in Beijing in 2022, developer and entrepreneur “Red” Xiao Hong, 33, registered it in Singapore with paid-up capital of $100,000.