Former Top Google Researchers Have Made a New Kind of AI Agent

A new wave of AI innovation is sweeping the tech scene, led by small but mighty AI startups and research labs packing heavy agentic punch. Here are the two standout moves you can’t ignore:

1. Manus – The Autonomous Multimodal Agent from Singapore 🔧

Developed by Monica (a Singapore-based startup led by founder Xiao Hong), Manus (Latin for “hands”) launched this March as one of the first true general-purpose autonomous agents aiwire.net+14Wikipedia+14AI Business+14.

• What it does: Plan and execute complex real-world tasks—from writing and deploying code to handling nuanced workflows—without constant human oversight Wikipedia.
  
  

• Why it matters: It marked a milestone in bridging the gap between "mind" and "hand," achieving human-level performance in analytical reasoning tasks arXiv+1AI Agent Store+1.
  But recent reports indicate Manus is pivoting—apparently winding down operations in China and consolidating in Singapore Wikipedia.
  
  

2. AlphaEvolve – Google DeepMind’s Code‑Writing Evolution Agent 🧬

Introduced in May 2025, AlphaEvolve is a Gemini-powered evolutionary coding agent developed by Google DeepMind Reddit+7Wikipedia+7Wikipedia+7.

• How it works: It iteratively generates and evaluates algorithm variants via LLMs, using evolutionary-style selection to optimize for better performance Wikipedia.
  
  

• Notable achievements:
  
  

  • Solved or beat state-of-the-art solutions for 20% of 50 open math/computer science problems
    
    

  • Rediscovered known algorithms 75% of the time
    
    

  • Delivered improvements like recovering 0.7% of Google’s data center compute and finding faster matrix‑multiplication methods unseen in 56 years

Together, these breakthroughs signal a turning point: from AI as a conversational tool to AI as an active collaborator—handling real-world tasks and advancing science through self-directed code.

🌐 The Road Ahead

• Monica’s Manus could further redefine autonomous agents—but its trajectory may shift if restructuring continues.
  
  

• Google’s AlphaEvolve is poised to become an indispensable tool for research labs and infrastructure teams—and could soon make algorithmic discovery a mainstream AI application.
  
  

Will the next decade see AI agents running labs, writing code, or managing servers entirely on their own? With Manus and AlphaEvolve leading the charge, that future might be closer than we think.