US Treasury launches investigation into Benchmark Capital’s ties to Chinese firm Manus AI
According to reports, the US Treasury Department is looking for a $ 75 million investment of Benchmark capital in the China company Manus AI. It now rises in tech rivals between the US and China and the US's desire to maintain its position ahead.
Officers from the department Recently The Silicon Valley Company was asked if the fund was covered by new policies that limit investments in AI and other important technologies to China.
The law, based on the outbound investment security program, is part of an order made by President Joe Biden in 2023. However, it has not been law until earlier this year.
It dictates that anyone or any organization in the US needs to tell the Treasury Department about any investments they make in major areas such as AI that can “accelerate and increase the success of developing sensitive technologies” that are none of the US's best interests.
In March, Manus released a great demo movie called the “second deepseek moment.” The company has shown that its AI agent can do poor activities on its own, such as long -standing projects and studying websites and apps independently.
The CEO of Openai, on the other hand, urges US lawmakers not to make policies that will slow the US AI.
Silicon Valley investors do not like investment in manus
A number of US law companies have told the benchmark that investment does not violate the policies on outgoing investments because the manus does not create its own AI models.
Its lawyers also came to the conclusion that the company was not really based in China. Someone familiar with the situation says that the company's parent butterfly impact the company is based on the Cayman Islands and has workers in the US, Singapore, Japan, and China. Manus said Manus saved all his data on cloud servers managed by western companies that were not in China.
However, some investors in the Silicon Valley do not like investing in the manus. For example, Josh Wolfe, co-founder of Lux Capital, wrote to X That the investment is “feeling zero.”
Delian Asparovi, a partner at Founders Fund, also Says, “I'm not saying that the benchmark partners are Chinese owners[…]But these are DEF assets in China. “
On the other hand, when Microsoft President Brad Smith was asked if Benchmark's investment in the manus was in the US national interest.
Benchmark does not believe that cutting a relationship with China is a good idea
One of the prominent investors in business adventure, Bill Gurley, is a general benchmark partner. He spoke against efforts to cut off the relationship with China
According to him, “The recent curbs of our country in the NVIDIA H20S, intended to slow China AI's change, will enhance and accelerate Chinese AI's modern AI. This action will create the opposite of intentions.”
However, many people are afraid that Chinese technology can provide Beijing an easy way to get information. And there are new claims that Chinese students in Stanford, especially AI students, are forced to work as spies for China. This happens in the middle of the Silicon Valley.
According to reports, even startups that widely used Open-Source AI models of Deepseek use technology that could have unknown security holes that help China. To ensure that even more dollars are not available in cracks in the rules, the Trump administration considers the placement of more limitations to the investments that go to China.
The benchmark is known for the careful choice of which startups to invest and one of the most successful venture capital firms of Silicon Valley. It provided companies such as eBay, Twitter, Uber, and Snap their first investment.
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