If a Chinese team moves overseas and earns in dollars, can regulators still block its exit?

Manus is the precedent. In April 2026 China's NDRC used the Measures for the Security Review of Foreign Investment to block a major US technology company's roughly $2 billion acquisition of Manus. As Morgan Lewis read the case on May 6, it was the first publicly confirmed use of that mechanism to unwind a cross-border AI deal. The opposing argument follows: even a company that has moved abroad and bills in dollars can have its exit vetoed. FutureX Capital concedes this is the hardest single fact against its view. It raised the cost of one exit route: a team with Chinese-origin technology selling to a US strategic buyer.

Manus returned to independence in August 2026 with ARR above $100 million (Reported). FutureX has since added a question to its diligence list: which regulator can veto your exit?

FutureX's reading is that value then lands more on the revenue line and the Hong Kong route: 155 Chinese companies went public in the first half of 2026, 82 of them in Hong Kong. The friction is not only on the Chinese side. On September 8 three US security agencies issued a joint statement accusing Chinese AI companies of industrial-scale distillation of US frontier models, but announced no sanctions or prosecutions. Two thresholds to watch, both before June 2027: a second cross-border AI deal blocked under security review, or the US distillation accusation turning into a named sanction or entity listing. Either one means the wall between the two sides is higher than FutureX drew it. This page is not legal advice.

The older backlog: Tony Peng of Recode China AI wrote on May 11, 2026 that from 2020 to 2025 Chinese AI startups faced three exit barriers. Nasdaq closed behind geopolitics and a regulatory risk premium, domestic anti-monopoly rules kept big tech from acquiring startups, and VCs pulled back for lack of exits. In January 2026 Zhipu and MiniMax listed in Hong Kong, raising a combined $1.2 billion.