Manus AI’s Wide Research—Redefining the Future of Automated Research
Big news is shaking up the world of artificial intelligence: Manus AI has just launched Wide Research, a breakthrough multi-agent system that runs over 100 AI agents in parallel. This release puts Manus at the forefront of automating complex, high-volume research tasks, challenging the traditional single-agent, step-by-step approach of competitors like OpenAI and Google.
Breaking Out of the Single-Agent Rut
Deep Research—the old standard for AI-powered investigation—relies on a single AI agent diving deep, sequentially handling sources, notes, and synthesis. It’s thorough, but dreadfully linear and slow for big jobs.
Wide Research flips this script. Instead of asking one agent to shoulder everything, Manus launches a swarm of up to 100 (or more) independent AI agents at the same time. Each one picks up a chunk of the problem—like profiling a company, comparing a product, or summarizing a document. When you need to analyze, say, one hundred sneaker models or compile social profiles for a list of Fortune 500 companies, Wide Research turns days of manual labor into results delivered in minutes.
Parallel Intelligence—How it Works
Every agent in Wide Research isn’t just a dumb bot—it’s a fully general-purpose AI instance. This means every “subagent” has the power to research, synthesize, analyze, and create, totally free from pre-assigned narrow roles. They all communicate through a proprietary collaboration protocol, sharing findings and coordinating in real time. Behind the scenes, everything runs on dedicated virtual machines in the cloud, meaning massive compute firepower is always at your fingertips.
Practical uses span a wild spectrum:
Comparative research: Evaluate 100+ products or organizations in parallel.
Profiling: Rapidly pull public data for sales, recruiting, or sourcing targets.
Bulk analysis: Batch process images, text summaries, market reports, and more.
Creative work: Simultaneously generate dozens of design variations, content ideas, or marketing assets.
Infrastructure Built for Scale
To make this happen, Manus invested in a large-scale virtualization backend. Forget the usual agent-manager hierarchy—Wide Research assigns each subagent as a full Manus instance on a private virtual machine. The result: robust scaling, greater stability, and flexible workflows that adapt to almost any imaginable task.
The agent cluster collaboration mechanism ensures agents split, tackle, and recombine their assigned tasks without getting in each other’s way. This isn’t just brute force—it’s smart parallel processing, with each agent adjusting its tactics as results come in.
Pricing, Access, and Real-Life Use
Right now, Wide Research is available for Pro subscribers ($199/month), the same tier as advanced offerings from OpenAI. Gradual rollout is planned for Plus ($39/month) and Basic users, with no finalized date announced. Pricing reflects the sheer computational horsepower involved: running 100+ cloud agents simultaneously isn’t cheap, but the time savings for heavy-duty research are undeniable.
Wide vs. Deep: When Parallel Outshines Sequential
Compared to OpenAI’s and Google’s “deep research” tools, which tackle one thread at a time, Manus Wide Research shines in scenarios where breadth and speed matter. If you want one cohesive, super-detailed deep dive, single-agent systems are still strong. If you need to compare, fetch, or analyze many things at once, Wide Research is simply in another league.
Manus’s Wide Research isn’t just another AI tool—it’s a paradigm shift in how we handle research, data processing, and bulk creative tasks. For anyone who feels slowed down by traditional, step-by-step artificial intelligence (AI) tools, Wide Research signals a bold future: massive collaboration, done all at once, and available to every user—not just Silicon Valley giants.
