Meta has begun dismantling its $2 billion acquisition of Manus, completing an operational separation from the Chinese-founded AI startup and halting data sharing between the two companies. This is the most concrete step yet toward complying with a divestiture order Beijing issued roughly two months ago on national security grounds.

Meta has cut Manus off from its internal systems, Bloomberg reported, preventing employees from using Manus tools for internal projects as the two companies move toward a full separation.

Meanwhile, according to May reports, the co-founders of Manus have held preliminary discussions about raising approximately $1 billion from outside investors to reclaim the startup from Meta, a move that could pave the way for a Chinese joint venture structure and an eventual listing in Hong Kong, a venue that has seen a surge in AI listings this year for Chinese AI startups like MiniMax and Zhipu.

What was supposed to be a landmark exit for Chinese AI is quickly unraveling. The move underscores Beijing’s determination to retain control over strategically sensitive technology, regardless of a company’s offshore incorporation.

In addition to the forced divestiture, Chinese authorities have since expanded travel restrictions to researchers and executives at private firms, requiring government approval before heading abroad. China is also tightening its grip on foreign capital, with reports indicating that top AI firms, including Moonshot AI, StepFun, and ByteDance, will need government sign-off before accepting U.S. investment, adding another layer to Beijing’s sweeping effort to control its AI sector.

Even as Meta moves to sever ties with Manus, the agentic AI startup has continued to ship new features, rolling out integrations with Similarweb and Shopify.

Manus drew widespread attention with a viral agent demo relocated its staff to Singapore in mid-2025 before announcing a $2 billion acquisition by Meta in December. Chinese regulators moved to scrutinize the transaction earlier this year, citing potential violations of technology export controls and foreign investment rules.

Manus investors, including California-based venture firm Benchmark, have already received their proceeds from the acquisition, while Asian backers, including Tencent, HSG, and ZhenFund, have indicated they will cooperate with the unwinding process, according to the WSJ.

Manus’ Chinese origins with parent company Butterfly Effect drew scrutiny on both sides of the Pacific, with Senator John Cornyn questioning whether American capital should flow to a Chinese-linked firm.

Meta and Manus did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.

Amazon has decided its big summer sale should arrive a little sooner. Prime Day 2026 will run from June 23 to 26, the company confirmed, starting at 12:01am Pacific time on the first day and keeping the four-day format Amazon adopted last year. The shift pulls the event out of its now-familiar July window and into late June.

This is less of a departure than it first looks. Prime Day has drifted around the calendar before, and June is not new territory: Amazon ran the event in June back in 2021 before it settled into a July rhythm.

What has stuck more recently is the length. Prime Day began as a single day in 2015, the company’s twentieth-anniversary promotion, and has since stretched to two days and then to four, a creep that tells you most of what you need to know about how the event has grown.

The mechanics are unchanged. The sale is open only to Prime subscribers, which is the entire point of it. Prime Day exists to make the membership feel worth its annual fee and to pull forward spending that might otherwise drift to rivals, and Amazon says this year’s edition will carry deals across more than 35 categories, from clothing and beauty to kitchen, home and electronics.

The deals are the lure; the subscription is the product. Amazon also uses the event to push its own devices and services, the Kindles, Echo speakers and Fire tablets that tend to carry some of the steepest discounts of the four days, precisely because they pull shoppers deeper into its ecosystem. That ecosystem is increasingly an AI one, with the company moving its Alexa shopping assistant into the main search bar as agentic commerce takes hold.

The timing is the only real news here, and it is the kind of decision that ripples outward. When Amazon moves Prime Day, the rest of retail tends to move with it. Competitors have learned to schedule their own counter-promotions around the same window to catch shoppers already primed to spend, so an earlier Prime Day generally means an earlier wave of rival sales rather than an isolated Amazon event.

Pulling the sale into June also lengthens the runway between Amazon’s mid-year event and the autumn shopping season, which the company has in recent years bridged with a second, autumn Prime event aimed at early holiday buyers. Whether an earlier June date changes that autumn calendar, Amazon did not say.

The event has also grown into a global fixture rather than a US one, running across dozens of countries on overlapping dates, which makes the scheduling decision a logistical one as much as a marketing one.

What the announcement does not include is any projection of sales, discount depth, or which products will anchor the event, details Amazon never trails in advance and tends to recap only afterward, in the superlatives it reserves for its own promotions. For now, the useful fact is the date. Prime Day is June 23 to 26, and the rest of retail can set its watch accordingly.