Everything You Need To Know About The Anthropic IPO & Israel Heads To The Polls

Hi readers, happy Tuesday! Today we’re covering a new IPO document from Anthropic, Brazil’s presidential elections, the fall of Serbia’s strongman president, key elections in Israel, a rare bipartisan moment in the U.S., a possible U.S.-Canada trade deal, and how AI is protecting people from hurricanes.

“I've always spent more time with a smile on my face than not, but the thing is, I don't write about it.” — Robert Smith

The Anthropic IPO Looms

AI giant Anthropic filed the final paperwork for its IPO on Monday. The document was eye-watering for two reasons: its length (250,000+ words!) and the sheer sums of money being thrown around in its pages. The company, which will trade under the ticker “$ANT,” is currently pushing for an initial valuation somewhere between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion – at the high end, that means this could become the biggest IPO in history, eclipsing the $1.8 trillion valuation earned by SpaceX at its IPO earlier this year. 

Digging deeper into the financials, the paperwork shows that Anthropic is growing in all directions – in both good and bad ways. Last year, the AI firm saw $4.6 billion in revenue which skyrocketed to $16.3 billion in just the first six months of 2026. At the same time, though, the company’s expenditures also ballooned, with the firm losing $80.7 billion in the first half of this year (largely due to a $72.4 billion one-time payment related to a type of debt that will turn into equity). More worryingly, Anthropic has committed up to $807 billion in contracts related to data centers and computer chips, and just 250 major enterprise customers are paying $10 million per year, with five of those customers making up 25% of the company’s revenue.

The investors that stand to gain the most from the blockbuster IPO include Amazon, Google, and a large crowd of venture capital firms. If Anthropic is valued at its $2 trillion target, Amazon’s shares would be worth $400 billion (a 20% stake, though an agreement states that Amazon can only hold 12% of Anthropic at a given time, with more shares becoming available as room opens up under the limit). Google also holds a 7% stake in the firm, which could rise if the tech giant exercises its existing contracts that would let it buy $30 billion worth of Anthropic shares. 

Lula Vs. The Bolsonaro Bloodline

Sunday was election day in Brazil, where voters were asked to choose between far-right candidate Flavio Bolsonaro (the son of disgraced former president Jair Bolsonaro) and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the country’s incumbent left-wing leader. In a surprise twist, Lula won a clear majority of votes (51.79%), clearing Bolsonaro’s total by a whopping 4.4 million ballots. 

Heading into the election, Lula was projected to lose in a majority of polls as Bolsonaro had won the first round of the presidential election with 47% of votes, well ahead of Lula's 45%. But two things changed between that first round election and Sunday’s contest. First, 2.9 million more people showed up for the runoff election. Second, Lula’s campaign began employing more tactics taken from the right-wing playbook heading into Sunday by leveraging a WhatsApp channel with almost 11 million members to flood the Brazilian internet with pro-Lula messaging.

Just a few hours after the election was called for Lula, the Brazilian Supreme Court banned Bolsonaro from leaving Brazil and ordered the senator to surrender his passports. The move was a quick way to stop Bolsonaro from repeating the playbook of his father who, after losing to Lula in 2022, fled to the U.S. and tried to orchestrate a coup. The younger Bolsonaro has still refused to concede defeat, though his party issued a statement saying, “We recognise the presidential result proclaimed by the electoral court, but believe that the questions raised need to be properly clarified through a balanced and democratic political debate.” Meanwhile, leaders from across South America have recognized Lula’s victory, though Trump has predictably stated that the runoff “looked like another rigged election” without providing any evidence for that claim.

Vučić Voted Out

• As student protests continue to roil Western Europe, a student movement to the east has reached new heights. On Sunday, Serbia’s Aleksandar Vučić conceded defeat in his country’s snap parliamentary elections, which saw the Student List party secure 52.7% of the vote while Vučić's Serbian Progressive Party won just 39.2%. The victory for the students marks the end of the Serbian strongman’s time in power (he’s ruled the country since 2014), as he was seeking to become the nation’s prime minister after terming out of the presidency.

• The student movement emerged in 2024 as a response to the collapse of a railway station canopy which killed 16 people. Outrage from that accident quickly snowballed into a wider movement criticizing corruption under Vučić’s government, with protests sweeping the entire nation. After the president called for snap parliamentary elections in September, the movement quickly organized and fielded a diverse range of candidates for parliament, including doctors, academics, and athletes. The Student List party is now set to hold at least 135 seats in Serbia’s 250-seat parliament (Vučić's party holds 105) – the party’s next goal is selecting a prime minister from its ranks, and after that the focus will shift to December’s presidential election.

Bibi’s Big Day

• Election season is clearly in full swing, and the storm of ballots is set to touch down in Israel next. Today, Israelis are voting to select the makeup of the country’s 120-seat legislature, which could rule the country for the next four years. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party is currently neck-and-neck with Yashar, a centrist political party headed by former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot. While those two are both at the top of the polls, neither one will be able to secure a majority in the Knesset, meaning the winner will have to work to establish a coalition government after the election.

• “This is the first chance Israelis will have to vote in what is becoming a referendum on what Netanyahu has come to represent following Oct. 7,” said an Israeli American political analyst. “For his supporters, he is the strong prime minister who fought back and was able to expand the war to other fronts to defend Israel,” she said. “And to his detractors or critics, people supporting parties of the opposition, he’s the prime minister who led to the failures of the government to detect or prevent Oct. 7 and has refused to take accountability for it.” In a bid to secure more votes, Netanyahu has been ramping up Israel’s aggression, pressuring defense officials to launch an attack on Iran in recent days while also threatening to initiate a massive offensive in the occupied West Bank after a deadly shooting targeting Israeli troops last Friday.

Additional World News

• In China, the AI bubble has already burst (Reuters)

• King Charles’s Caribbean Tour Is a High-Stakes Diplomatic Test (NYT, $)

• Jio Platforms IPO: India's largest share sale could end cheap mobile internet for millions (BBC)

• Houthis say they attacked Saudi oil pumping stations, Riyadh airport as fighting intensifies (Reuters)

• Xi Jinping’s corruption crackdown in the spotlight as China prepares for meeting of top leaders (Guardian)

• France Offers Concessions to Quell Student Protests (WSJ, $): “The French government announced new teaching posts, expanded university admissions and billions of euros in loans for school renovations in its first significant concessions to student protests that have roiled the nation.”

Bipartisanship? In This Economy?

• It’s like one of those stories of a lion and tiger learning to live together in the same zoo enclosure – rare and kind of heartwarming. On Monday, a pair of former South Carolina governors – one Democrat and one Republican – issued a joint statement endorsing Dr. Annie Andrews, the Democratic candidate for one of South Carolina’s U.S. Senate seats. Andrews is running against Republican Darline Graham, the Trump-backed incumbent who inherited her seat from Lindsey Graham, her deceased older brother.

• In their rare display of bipartisan politics, the two former governors declared that “this country is too divided and the political rhetoric has gotten way, way out of hand,” adding that “Annie understands that leadership isn’t about making people angrier … it’s about making things better.” South Carolina is a solidly Republican state that hasn’t elected a Democratic Senator in the 21st century, but Andrews’ well-oiled campaign (and Graham’s inexperience) has made this a close race – recent polls show Graham with a narrow 49%-45% lead over the Democrat.

Why Can’t We Be Friends?

• According to multiple sources from both countries, the U.S. and Canada are getting close to a deal that could cool down their ongoing trade conflict, which saw the U.S. implement new tariffs on Canadian steel and autos (50% and 25% respectively) in August. While Trump signed off on those tariffs of his own volition, the president is now backpedaling as the policies have proven unpopular with Republicans in the Northern U.S., which trades heavily with Canada.

• It’s not clear whether such a deal would be finalized by election day, and it’s also unclear which side is willing to blink first in the negotiations. Trump has told voters that Canada is “willing to give us anything at this moment” and that a deal would be settled “pretty soon,” but Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has said to the press that “To the extent any progress has been made, it's because the US is coming closer to our position.” Last Friday, Trump did bend a little by signing an executive order that removes 50% tariffs on some Canadian agricultural and forestry products in a bid to earn goodwill that might transfer over to Susan Collins, the Republican running for one of Maine’s U.S. Senate seats.

Additional USA News

• Trump administration attempting to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey again (NPR)

• Man serving a life sentence for murder slips through a fence and escapes a Tennessee prison (AP) 

• Trump administration asks Washington to set aside hundreds of ballots from suspected noncitizen voters (Guardian) 

• Jared Kushner’s Hacked Phone Revealed His Secret Negotiations—Including More Than $700 Million in Transfers (Vanity Fair)

• Bird Flu Is Raging on a Mink Farm. It Could Spark a Human Pandemic, Experts Say, but Officials Won’t Act (ProPublica)

• Public Colleges Are Passing the $50,000-a-Year Mark. For Locals. (NYT, $): “At the University of California campuses in Berkeley, Irvine and Santa Barbara, students get an unwitting education in navigating the housing market.”

AI Takes The World Of Storms By Storm

• While AI slop is breaking people’s brains and data centers eat up more and more energy, AI is still being used for some good. According to meteorologists, new neural network algorithms are transforming the world of hurricane forecasting for the better, out-predicting traditional physics-based hurricane models and in turn protecting more people from storms.

• Those older models rely on real-time atmospheric data (think temperature, humidity, and air pressure) collected from satellites and aircraft, running them through a series of complex equations to determine where a storm is headed and how powerful it might be. Meanwhile, new AI tools like Google’s DeepMind rely more on historical data, comparing current atmospheric data with thousands of past storms in order to predict how a given hurricane might develop. These models often end up operating like a black box, meaning the spit out correct answers while their developers don’t exactly know why. “We don't know why they might get a forecast right,” said one forecaster. “We also don't know why they might get a forecast wrong.”

• That doesn’t mean forecasters are now relying entirely on AI to predict how storms move – instead, meteorologists have begun blending forecasts from both AI and traditional models. “Every storm has different forecast challenges. That's why we take that consensus approach and use that blend of the best models,” said National Hurricane Center Director Michael Brennan. “We're using our expertise and our understanding to translate that hurricane forecast into the hazard space, and that's what people really need to pay attention to.”

Additional Reads

• Jay-Z to headline Super Bowl LXI halftime show (ESPN)

• Liver King and the Rise of Dark Nutrition (Enlightened Omnivore) 

• Police using AI risks making discrimination worse, researchers warn (BBC)

• How smart urinals became the Premier League’s latest marginal gain (Athletic, $)

• Apple acknowledges iPhone Duo display ‘issue’ after reports of cracked screens (Verge)

• The Hottest New Side Hustle Is Stripping Copper Wire and Posting About It (Wired, $): “Copper prices are at record highs, but for TikTok creators, the real money may be in teaching others how to strip wire—and selling them the tools to do it.”

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