Butterfly Effect, Parent of Manus, Raises Over $500M

The scale of this round stands out less for the headline figure than for what it signals about where capital is still willing to concentrate: a single AI agent company pulling in more than half a billion dollars while the same roundup notes declining Chinese and Asian equities. That divergence — private AI enthusiasm against soft public markets — is the real story. Whether that funding gap between private AI bets and listed equities persists is the open question worth watching.