Lisbon – From the Web Summit 2026 event site. The Web Summit 2026 event opened in Lisbon on Monday evening, and the first interview on the main stage was given to Manus. This startup, which categorizes general-purpose AI and agent, featured its co-founder and Chief Product Officer, Tao Zhang on stage. He summarized the company’s current operations and recruitment approach in one sentence: “AI is already very adept at getting things done. So we don’t need more people who are only good at getting things done.”
This one-on-one interview, titled “The Era of Agents”, was hosted by Web Summit in collaboration with co-host Casey Lau. Zhang started off with a joke: “I’m very pleased to be the first human guest speaker. But I can’t dance.” Lau then mentioned that this was his first time speaking since “all the problems occurred over there in Meta”. Zhang responded briefly: “When you’re running a startup, there are many issues that need to be addressed. […] Now we’re focused on the future.”
From computers to phone numbers, email addresses, and wallets
Manus was launched in March 2025 as a general-purpose agent. According to Zhang, it "in some ways defined this category" because it equipped AI with its own computer, allowing a single agent to complete long-duration, human-like tasks. Twenty months later, he said, "Equipping agent with a computer has become common practice."
The next step will appear in the Manus 2.0 release at the end of September. Zhang lists what the company agent can do now: "We have assigned a phone number to agent, so it can make calls, send and read messages. We have assigned an email address to agent, so it can register for services on its own or handle emails. These are not your emails; they are its own emails." In addition, there is a digital wallet, so "with your authorization, it can already help you buy things." According to the official announcement, these functions are part of the personal agent application Cue that was launched alongside Manus 2.0, and expenditures will be limited to the budget set by the user.
30 to-do items processed by agent
The most personal part of this conversation came from Zhang’s own morning routine. “I’m a typical member of the ADHD group,” he said. “The hardest part of my daily life is not solving problems, but taking action.” He mentioned that every morning there are 20 or 30 tasks waiting for him; if he spent 15 minutes on each task, it would take about 300 minutes for the whole day. “Six months ago, I would just ignore them and pretend they didn’t exist.”
Now, he will hand over the entire list to Manus, which will then break it down into individual tasks. For each task, agent will either request more background information from him or ask him to assign the task to team members. In the latter case, Manus will send the organized background information to his colleagues through Slack. This information comes from the company's Notion, Slack, and Gmail. “My teammates won’t receive just a brief to-do item; they’ll get a complete background study,” says Lau. He describes it as something like chief of staff; Zhang prefers to call it “my PMO”.
Recruitment: Spend four hours with Manus instead of doing programming tests.
When asked how Manus will recruit in 2027, Zhang stated that this change began in March of this year. The company no longer gives traditional programming exams to engineering candidates; instead, they are required to "use Manus to solve a problem within four hours," and then the process is reviewed together with the candidate to "see if the candidate is accustomed to collaborating with AI."
Within the company, job responsibilities have largely disappeared. Professional profiles still list front-end and back-end engineers, but internally, “everyone can do everything”: in the product and marketing teams he oversees, everyone contributes code to the repository and participates in design, and designers also write code. As for job titles? “To be honest, we don’t value titles. What matters to us are people who can get things done.”
Videos with fewer than 30 words
The interview concluded with a demonstration of the Manus 2.0 video tool ( Manus Studio ). Zhang mentioned that he had less than 30 keywords to guide him: "research Web Summit 2026", and he created a 30-second video. This video was then displayed on the main stage screen and earned a round of applause.
Meta Background
Meta announced the acquisition of Manus at the end of December 2025. According to media reports, the transaction was valued at over $2 billion. In January 2026, China initiated a review of the deal and on April 27th, ordered its cancellation. On September 1st, Manus announced that it had "officially resumed independent operations" under the leadership of its founding team; on September 28th, the company launched Manus 2.0 and Cue.
