Manus Wipes User Data as Meta Deal Unwinds, Backup Window Shuts August 23
Manus deletes every task created or updated since December 29, 2025 starting 08:00 SGT on August 23. The NDRC in China ordered the $2B Meta acquisition reversed, and the backup window closes one minute before deletion begins.
- Manus starts deleting tasks created after December 29, 2025 at 08:00 SGT on August 23.
- Backups close one minute earlier, and the restore portal opens August 25 for a single use.
- The trigger is a Chinese regulator ordering the
$2BMeta deal unwound, not a breach.
On August 11 the AI agent service Manus published A Note to Our Users, announcing that it will delete work some of its users have accumulated. Manus takes a one-line instruction and then browses the web, organizes what it finds, and builds out websites or slide decks on its own. What disappears is that accumulated pile: the conversations and the artifacts they produced.
There was no breach and no outage. The notice cites the process of returning to independent operation and complying with "the regulatory requirements of certain jurisdictions." Manus was a Meta subsidiary as recently as March, when it shipped its desktop app. Reverting to an independent company means clearing out the data that piled up during the acquisition.
Every date and time in the notice is stated in Singapore Time. The official page adds US Eastern and Central European Time only, so the UTC column below is arithmetic on SGT (UTC+8), not a Manus-published figure.
| Stage | Announced time (SGT) | UTC |
|---|---|---|
| Backup window closes | August 23, 07:59 | August 22, 23:59 |
| Deletion begins, access cut off | August 23, 08:00 | August 23, 00:00 |
| Restore portal opens | August 25, 08:00 | August 25, 00:00 |
When you created your account decides what survives
The cutoff date is December 29, 2025, the day Meta closed its purchase of Manus. Anything that came into existence after that date is in scope. The Manus help center splits personal accounts into three types and handles each one differently.
| Type | Condition | What happens during deletion |
|---|---|---|
| A | Created before December 29, with no Pro subscription or one that started earlier | Account and subscription survive. Only post-December 29 task data and active connectors are deleted. Pro users get an extra month of credits |
| B | Created before December 29, but the Pro subscription started on or after that date | Same deletion scope as A. Subscription is cancelled and prorated, with the same tier provided free until deletion starts |
| C | Created on or after December 29, or had its account email or user information changed after that date | The account itself is deleted. Task data, subscription, and associated data all go, and active subscriptions are refunded |
The second condition on type C is easy to miss. If you signed up in 2024 but changed your account email this year, the entire account is in scope.
The task-level test is broader than it first appears too. The help center states that regardless of account type, every task "created or updated on or after December 29, 2025" gets deleted. A task you built last summer counts if you opened it once this year and kept working. Websites you deployed through Manus stop resolving at 08:00 SGT on August 23.
Team accounts inherit the owner's personal account type, and only the owner can back up team data. If your organization runs Manus as a team, start by working out whose account holds ownership.
The affected regions were never published
Manus has not released the list of jurisdictions where deletion applies. Both the notice and the help articles say only "certain jurisdictions" and "affected regions," and direct users to in-app notifications and email for their individual status. Users who signed up with Apple ID or Facebook get in-app notification only, because Manus never received an email address for them.
There is no published list, but there is something observable. Opening the manus.im signup flow from a Seoul network on August 13, 2026 produces this modal first.
The modal reads:
To comply with the regulatory requirements of certain jurisdictions, data for accounts created in your region is scheduled for deletion from 2026-08-23 08:00 (SGT) to 2026-08-25 07:59 (SGT).
It then recommends postponing account creation until after August 25. That matches what the help center describes: new users in affected regions can still sign up, but will receive an in-app notice that their data is scheduled for deletion on the stated dates. Whether the wording varies by region has not been cross-checked from other networks, so the accurate way to determine your own status is the in-app notification.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Who should check | Every personal and team Manus user. Actual deletion hits affected-region accounts only |
| Pricing | Free (300 credits daily), $20/mo (4,000 monthly credits), $40 (8,000), $200 (40,000). Annual billing takes 17% off |
| Regional status | Manus itself remains usable. The affected-jurisdiction list is unpublished, and a Seoul network shows the deletion notice at signup |
| Requirements | Sign in before 07:59 SGT on August 23. Facebook-login accounts must add another sign-in method before backup works |
Back up as often as you like, restore exactly once
The backup tool lives at manus.im/backup. Task data comes down as an encrypted archive running from tens of megabytes to tens of gigabytes. A single package caps at 4GB, so anything larger splits across multiple files. Type C accounts need a separate account-information backup, which arrives as an email attachment capped at 10MB.
You can run the backup as many times as you want. Tasks created after a backup do not merge into it automatically, so you need one more run right before 07:59 SGT on August 23 to capture everything up to that moment.
Restore runs the other way. The help documentation states that restore is available only once and tells users to verify which package they are uploading. If repeated backups have left you with several files, label the newest one now. Renaming a backup file or moving it also renders it unusable.
The restore sequence depends on type. Types A and B sign in and upload the task-data backup. Type C uploads the account-information backup first to revive the account, then the task data. Connectors have to be re-enabled by hand; deployed websites come back automatically once task data is restored.
The money side is automatic. Refunds process within seven days of the announcement and cover prorated subscription fees plus WebDev usage, cloud computer balance, Stripe balance, and unused add-on credits. Stripe and Google Play refund to the original payment method; Apple granted an exception so Manus can request those in bulk. If nothing lands within 15 business days, an encrypted refund receipt arrives by email and can be submitted at manus.im/claim-refund for manual processing that takes roughly three weeks. Affected users are not billed during the backup window.
How a $2 billion acquisition got undone in eight months
This deletion is the downstream consequence of a regulatory decision, not a product decision.
Meta closes its roughly $2 billion acquisition of Singapore-headquartered Manus. This date becomes the deletion cutoff
China's National Development and Reform Commission blocks the deal and orders it reversed. The first AI acquisition publicly stopped since the 2020 foreign investment security review regime came in
Reports of existing investors Tencent, ZhenFund, and HSG negotiating to buy back Meta's stake at the same $2 billion. Tencent becomes the largest shareholder
Manus publishes the official notice. Backup window opens, new subscription sales pause in affected regions
The buyback price matched what Meta paid, but the business had grown in between. Caixin reports Manus annual recurring revenue rising from around $100 million in December 2025 to around $400 million by June 2026. The investors reclaimed a company whose revenue quadrupled in eight months at the original price, and the cleanup cost lands on users backing up their own task history.
The exposure here is not specific to Manus. What accumulates inside an agent service is not a few chat logs but months of research, deployed websites, and connected company accounts. When the ownership of a service changes, so does the jurisdiction governing that data, and whether it stays or goes gets decided there. Manus built a dedicated backup tool and gave people 12 days. Not every company will.
If you have a Manus account, open the app today and read the in-app notification. If you are in scope, pull your task data from manus.im/backup and pull it again right before 07:59 SGT on August 23. For every other AI tool you rely on at work, finding where its export function lives is worth the same few minutes.