Manus AI Partners With Microsoft’s Azure AI Foundry

Manus AI is an Agentic AI platform curated by a Chinese Startup, Butterfly Effect. The company announced on Wednesday that its AI subsidiary is now set to partner with Microsoft Azure’s AI Foundry. 

Azure AI Foundry is a unified platform from Microsoft that allows businesses and enterprises to access AI tools, models, and services in one place. Similarly, Manus AI is a general-purpose AI agent that helps to plan, execute, and deliver insightful results by processing and navigating websites and data from sources. 

Tao Cheung, co-founder of Manus AI, said, “Today, Manus’s muscle comes from Azure AI Foundry. By running on Foundry’s enterprise-grade backbone, Manus gains world-class AI agility, rock-solid security, and limitless scale”.

According to the GAIA benchmark, a body formed to test the capabilities of general AI assistants to solve real-world problems, Manus has outperformed OpenAI’s Deep Research in various aspects. 

Manus AI has also recently announced the all new image recognition capabilities that is going to elevate the use cases even higher. The platform has opened up for the public regisrations last week only where the users are invited for one free daily task. The platform is also offering 1,000 credis to all users to allow them explore the tools and checks the use case alignments. 

Enterprises and users looking to subscribe to Manus AI for long-term use can choose from the 4 subscription tiers offered by the company. The basic plan starts at $19/month, the Plus plan can be subscribed for $39/month, and the Pro plan costs $199/month. The company also offers a team plan that can be customized according to real-time requirements. 

According to a report by Bloomberg, Butterfly Effect has secured funding of $75 million from a US venture capital firm, Benchmark. Soon after the investment, Semafor (a news platform) has reported that the US Treasury Department is evaluating the Benchmark, where the firm is being asked if the investment is affected by the new rules and restrictions on AI investment and other critical technologies legislation intended for countries of concern. 

The evaluation rose from the ground of the Outbound Investment Security Program formed by Former US President Joe Biden. The program requires the firms and entities to notify their investments in areas like AI to the treasury department