🤖 Manus Agents launch on Telegram

PLUS: How access and use Claude for Excel step by step guide (Real-World Testing)

Author

Alvaro Cintas
February 17, 2026

Good Morning! Manus just launched its new Agents mode, but not where you’d expect. Instead of WhatsApp, it’s rolling out on Telegram first. Plus, I’ll show you how access and use Claude for Excel step by step.

Plus, in today’s AI newsletter:

  • Manus Agents Launch on Telegram

  • ByteDance Unleashes Seed 2.0

  • NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra Redefines AI Efficiency

  • How access and use Claude for Excel

  • 4 new AI tools worth trying

AI INTEGRATIONS

Manus has introduced its AI agent directly inside Telegram chats, allowing users to run complex, multi-step tasks without leaving the app. Telegram is the first supported platform, with others planned later.

  • Users can connect via QR code and access Agents regardless of subscription tier

  • Supports research, data processing, document creation, plus voice, image, and file inputs

  • Two models available: Manus 1.6 Max for heavy tasks and Manus 1.6 Lite for quick queries

Launching on Telegram suggests Meta is cautiously testing agent tech away from its core platforms, especially as AI agents remain fragile around security and reliability. This move hints at how careful big players are being as agents move from demos to real-world use.

AI MODELS

ByteDance’s Seed 2.0 models are matching or beating top Western labs across key benchmarks, priced nearly 10x cheaper and built for real-world agent workflows.

  • Seed 2.0 Pro outperforms GPT-5.2 and Gemini 3 Pro in math, reasoning, and vision at ~$0.47 per million input tokens

  • Designed for agentic use cases, with demos completing complex 96-step CAD workflows autonomously

  • Launch follows viral Seedance 2.0 video model, now facing backlash over copyrighted characters and voices

  • Available via Doubao’s Expert Mode and API, with limited access outside China for now

With Seed 2.0 beating recent frontier models at bargain rates, ByteDance is putting real pressure on Western AI labs, while signaling it’s ready to push boundaries fast, permission or not.

AI MODELS

NVIDIA’s new Blackwell Ultra GB300 NVL72 systems are now being deployed at scale by cloud providers, targeting low-latency, long-context, and agentic AI workloads.

  • Up to 50× higher performance per megawatt compared to the Hopper platform

  • 35× lower cost per token, making large-scale inference far cheaper

  • Optimized for agentic coding, coding assistants, and long-context AI

  • Powered by a co-designed stack with NVIDIA Dynamo and TensorRT-LLM

Energy is becoming the biggest bottleneck in AI. Blackwell Ultra tackles this head-on by massively improving performance per watt while slashing costs, unlocking wider deployment of powerful agentic AI systems.

HOW TO AI

🗂️ How Acess & Use Claude for Excel

In this tutorial, you’ll get a practical, no-hype walkthrough of Claude for Excel, Anthropic’s new AI-powered Excel add-in.

🧰 Who is This For

  • Finance professionals curious about AI-powered Excel workflows

  • Analysts and consultants who work with messy real-world data

  • Students learning financial modeling and data analysis

  • Anyone considering Claude for Excel and wanting an honest evaluation

STEP 1: Install Claude for Excel

To get started, open Excel and go to your homepage. From there, navigate to Add-ins, then click More Add-ins. In the search bar, type Claude.

You should see Claude by Anthropic in Excel appear. Click Add to install it. If you already have it installed, you can simply click Open. Once loaded, you’ll see Claude appear as a panel on the right side of your spreadsheet.

At the moment, the tool is in beta, and you’ll need a paid Claude plan to actually use it.

STEP 2: Data Cleaning Test (Where Claude Shines)

We’ll start with a messy dataset containing several realistic errors. Some company names are duplicated but spelled slightly differently, such as “Amazon” and “Aamazon.” Some names contain extra spaces. One of the numeric values even contains a hidden typo where the number zero is replaced with the letter “O.”

After selecting the entire dataset, we simply prompt Claude with something generic like “Clean up the data.” Claude immediately identifies duplicated company names, detects spacing issues in text fields, and even catches the tricky character error in the numeric column.

It not only explains the issues, but also fixes them directly in the spreadsheet. This is a very strong first impression and one of Claude for Excel’s best use cases.

STEP 3: Debugging Broken Excel Formulas

Next, we test formula debugging, another key part of data cleaning. The spreadsheet contains common Excel errors like #NAME? and #VALUE!.

Claude is asked to debug the formulas in the sheet. It correctly identifies that text values in an IF statement were not enclosed in quotation marks. It also catches a SUMIF error where the criteria range and sum range are different lengths.

After approving the fixes, Claude updates the formulas automatically. For debugging and explaining Excel errors, Claude performs very well and can save a lot of time.

STEP 4: Financial Modeling

We move on to financial modeling, one of Claude’s advertised strengths. First, we test a simple mortgage example: a $600,000 loan over 20 years at 5% interest, asking Claude to build an amortization table.

Claude generates a full monthly amortization schedule using formulas, and the ending balance correctly reaches zero at the final month. Changing the loan amount updates the model correctly, which is a good sign.

However, problems might appear and results might not be 100% accurate, so make sure to always double check the results.

A senior official says Pentagon is “close” to designating Anthropic a “supply chain risk”, requiring all US military contractors to sever ties with the company.

Alibaba debuts Qwen3.5, a 397B-parameter open-weight multimodal AI model that it says is 60% cheaper to use and 8x better at large workloads than Qwen3.

Following Disney, Paramount sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance, alleging its AI-generated Seedance videos and Seedream images infringed Paramount's IP.

Sony says it has developed tech to identify copyrighted music in AI-generated songs, aiming to help rights holders receive compensation if their music was used

🦀 KimiClaw: Use open OpenClaw in the browser

🧑‍💻 Claude Opus 4.6: Built for long, serious work in coding and research

⚙️ GPT-5.3 Codex: Faster coding model with strong reasoning

🎨 Qwen-Image-2.0: Alibaba’s all-in-one image generation and editing model

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THAT’S IT FOR TODAY

Thanks for making it to the end! I put my heart into every email I send, I hope you are enjoying it. Let me know your thoughts so I can make the next one even better!

See you tomorrow :)

- Dr. Alvaro Cintas