- AI PlanetX
- Posts
- Meta Takes Over Manus AI
In partnership with
Welcome to another edition of AI PlanetX.
Meta acquires hot AI startup Manus; SoftBank completes $40B OpenAI investment as Claude Code authors 100% of its own updates.
Inside This Edition: đź’Ž
Hottest AI News
Top AI & SaaS Tools
AI Tutorial: How to Use ChatGPT Shopping Research
Top AI & Tech News
AI Art Spotlight
Prompt of the Day: Humanized Writing Prompt Settings
AI Video Tutorial
Course of the Day: Claude Code - Agentic Coding Assistant
Hottest AI News
Meta
Silicon Valley’s Hottest AI Startup Manus Goes to Meta
Mark Zuckerberg has made another massive power move, acquiring the "talk of Silicon Valley" AI startup Manus for a reported $2 billion—meeting the exact valuation the company was seeking for its next funding round.
Details:
Manus isn’t a speculative AI play. It already generates $100M+ in annual recurring revenue from millions of users. Its agents outperform OpenAI’s Deep Research on complex tasks like stock analysis and hiring
The startup’s valuation jumped from $500M to $2B in months after a Benchmark-led round. But its Beijing roots and backing from Chinese investors, including Tencent, drew criticism from U.S. politicians like Senator John Cornyn
Meta says Manus will run independently while its agent tech rolls into Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Meta also says all Chinese ownership will be removed and China operations will shut down
This deal represents a pivotal shift for Meta, securing an AI product that is already profitable to help justify Zuckerberg's $60 billion infrastructure spending spree.
The Future of AI in Marketing. Your Shortcut to Smarter, Faster Marketing.
Unlock a focused set of AI strategies built to streamline your work and maximize impact. This guide delivers the practical tactics and tools marketers need to start seeing results right away:
7 high-impact AI strategies to accelerate your marketing performance
Practical use cases for content creation, lead gen, and personalization
Expert insights into how top marketers are using AI today
A framework to evaluate and implement AI tools efficiently
Stay ahead of the curve with these top strategies AI helped develop for marketers, built for real-world results.
OpenAI
SoftBank Completes $40 Billion Investment in OpenAI
SoftBank has officially completed its massive $40 billion investment commitment to OpenAI, finalizing the transaction last week with a transfer of over $22 billion to secure a stake exceeding 10% in the ChatGPT maker.
Details:
The funding target was hit after SoftBank syndicated $10B and put in $8B. It helped fund this by selling its $5.8B Nvidia stake. The deal valued the startup at a $260B pre money valuation
The money supports OpenAI’s $1.4T AI infrastructure plan. That includes the “Stargate” project with Oracle and supply deals with Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom. SoftBank also bought DigitalBridge for $4B to expand data center capacity
With a possible IPO ahead, the startup is widening support beyond Microsoft. It’s exploring a $10B investment from Amazon. It also closed a $1B Disney deal so Sora can use licensed characters like Mickey Mouse
With the full $40 billion delivered, SoftBank has become a key backer of OpenAI’s drive to build next‑generation AI compute.
Top AI & SaaS Tools
Mini Course Generator (Life-time Deal): AI-powered platform that quickly creates, customizes, and sells interactive online courses with a drag-and-drop editor
Claude Chrome: Claude in Chrome currently has browser interaction capabilities — it can navigate, select, type, and fill forms
Giselle: Open-source no-code platform with a visual node editor for building and running multi-provider AI workflows with real-time tracking [F-R-E-E]
Qwen Edit Fast: Improved image-editing model with better consistency, integrated LoRA support, industrial-design features, and stronger geometric reasoning [F-R-E-E]
Moondream 3: Point it at an image and ask practical questions—count objects, ID items, find things—so you can build visual features [F-R-E-E]
Build real AI and tech skills, faster
Udacity helps you build the AI and tech skills employers need—fast. Learn from industry experts through hands-on, real-world projects in flexible, fully online courses. From AI and machine learning to data, programming, and cloud, gain practical skills you can apply immediately and use to move your career forward.
AI Tutorial
How to Use ChatGPT Shopping Research to Find the Best Deals
If you’re tired of opening ten tabs just to compare prices, this tutorial shows you how to use ChatGPT’s Shopping Research to handle everything in one place—from product discovery to final checkout links.
Enable Shopping Research
Launch ChatGPT, tap the plus button beside the message box, and choose Shopping Research. This activates the tool and allows ChatGPT to pull real-time product listings, prices, and availability.
Clearly Describe What You Want
Explain your need in natural language, such as:
"Find me affordable noise-cancelling headphones with strong battery life for travel."Provide Helpful Filters
Strengthen the search by adding simple constraints like:
Budget range
Preferred specs (e.g., screen size, storage, material, feature-level)
Whether new, refurbished, or both are acceptable
Review Curated Suggestions
ChatGPT will return a structured shortlist that typically includes:
Top recommended products with brief summaries
Price comparisons across several retailers
Pros, cons, and key feature trade-offs
Any strong alternatives you may not have considered
Compare Options in More Detail
If you want deeper clarity, ask ChatGPT to compare items side-by-side. For example:
"Compare these three backpack options and tell me which one is best for daily commuting."Explore Additional Recommendations
If none of the first suggestions feel right, ask ChatGPT to expand the search. You can adjust filters such as color preferences, weight/portability, or warranty requirements without restarting the process.
Choose and Purchase
Once you’ve decided, press the retailer links provided in the results. They will take you directly to the correct product page where you can complete your purchase securely.
Note: Ask ChatGPT for real-world use cases or user scenarios to understand how a product performs beyond specs.
Top AI & Tech News
Boris Cherny, creator of Anthropic’s Claude Code, said that over the past month every contribution to the agentic tool was authored by Claude Code itself — in his words, “100% of contributions”
Zhipu AI has filed for an IPO in Hong Kong, becoming the first publicly listed large language model (LLM) company worldwide, ahead of OpenAI and Anthropic
Fal released FLUX.2 Turbo — a distilled, ultra-rapid, open-weight FLUX.2 [dev] model that creates high-quality images much quicker and cheaper than many rivals
OpenAI founding member Andrej Karpathy said he’s “never felt this much behind as a programmer” and that the profession is “being dramatically refactored”
AI Art Spotlight
Create Your Own Photo Like This Using the Prompt Below:
An expert [DISCIPLINE] designer’s presentation board for [SUBJECT] — [ICONIC FEATURES / ERA], featuring black-and-white 2D technical drawings with annotations and dimensions on the left, an exploded axonometric diagram revealing [KEY INTERNAL COMPONENTS / MATERIALS] in the center, and a photorealistic 3D render of [SUBJECT] in [ICONIC ENVIRONMENT / SCENE] on the right, with [LIGHTING / ATMOSPHERE / MOTION DETAILS]; visual style transitions from [TECHNICAL / ARCHIVAL TONES] to [EMOTIONAL / ATMOSPHERIC COLOR PALETTE], clean grid layout, museum-grade industrial design presentation, ultra-detailed cinematic realism, title block reading “[TITLE] — [YEAR / VARIANT / TAGLINE]”.Model: Nano Banana Pro
Prompt of the Day
Claude Humanized Writing Prompt Settings
Use this Claude prompt setup when you want your writing to feel genuinely human and conversational, not stiff or overly polished. It focuses on small things real people do naturally, like using contractions, mixing short and long sentences, adding natural pauses, and slipping in quick asides or second thoughts that make the voice feel alive.
Top AI Video Tutorial
I Ranked Every AI Video Generator of 2026
AI Course of the Day
Claude Code: A Highly Agentic Coding Assistant
Hands-on course teaching developers to use Claude Code (currently trending in AI) for exploring, developing, testing, refactoring, and debugging codebases, and for extending it with MCP servers (Playwright, Figma). Includes three projects: a RAG chatbot; refactoring an e-commerce notebook into a production-ready interactive dashboard; and converting a Figma mockup into a full-stack web app.