Israel Votes as Trump Backs Netanyahu; Anthropic Filing Revealed

Sam Israel is holding a national election today, and it's the first one since the attacks of October 7, 2023. For anyone trying to keep up, it matters well beyond Israel. So let's start with the practical side: how does voting day actually work, and when will we know anything?

Maya Polls opened at 7 a.m. local time and close at 10 p.m., which is 4 p.m. Eastern. Exit polls come out the moment voting ends. Official results are scheduled to be confirmed on November 4. Election Day is a public holiday, and about 7.3 million people are eligible to vote.

Sam A public holiday does make it easy to get to the polls. But I'm trying to picture what the result is. Do voters pick a prime minister directly, or is it something else?

Maya They choose all 120 members of the 26th Knesset, Israel's parliament. A government needs 61 seats. No single party has ever won 61 on its own, so the prime minister is whoever can assemble a coalition afterward, meaning a group of parties that agree to govern together. The vote is the start of the bargaining, not the end of it.

Sam So a party can come first and still not get the top job. That seems odd to me. And I remember Israel voting over and over in recent years, so is this another rushed vote?

Maya No. Between 2019 and 2022 Israel held five votes in under four years, but this one is different. The Knesset elected in November 2022 reached the end of its four-year term. It formally dissolved on July 17, 2026, and it was the first Israeli parliament to serve a full term without early dissolution since 1988. The coalition on the ballot is the one sworn in on December 29, 2022, under Benjamin Netanyahu.

Sam Okay, a full term. Now, small parties must be in the mix too. Is there a minimum a party has to clear, or does everyone who gets a few votes get a seat?

Maya There's a threshold of 3.25 percent of valid votes, which works out to about four seats. The Jerusalem Post, citing the Taub Center, said that at 70 percent turnout, roughly the rate in 2022, a party would need about 165,635 votes. Here's the catch: higher turnout raises that number. So today's turnout can knock small parties out, and their votes get redistributed.

Sam So a party could do everything right and still miss out because more people showed up than expected. That feels harsh for the voters who backed it, since their ballots essentially vanish.

Maya They do count as cast, but they don't win a seat. That matters today because of Benny Gantz. He left the race on October 19, eight days before the vote, saying at a press conference, "Unfortunately, at this time, I have not been able to convince enough of the people, and the responsibility is mine," as The Times of Israel reported. His Blue and White party had polled under the threshold for months. But the withdrawal came so late that it stays on the ballot, so votes for it are wasted. For the opposition, that's a live tactical problem today.

Sam And with no new polls allowed now, I'm guessing voters can't check how things stand. When was the last look at the race?

Maya The last publishable polls came out on Friday, October 23. Israeli law then bars new polls until the exit polls. The three main television surveys agreed on the shape of the race and disagreed on the margin. Netanyahu's allies were at 50 seats in all three. The opposition bloc seeking to replace him was at 52 on Kan, 54 on Channel 13 and 56 on Channel 12.

Sam Something happened on the Iran side that I only half caught. The American president weighed in on the Israeli race itself, and I'd like to know what he said, when he said it, and how it fits with the Iran issue that keeps coming up.

Maya On October 18 he posted what he called a "complete and total endorsement" of Netanyahu on Truth Social, and wrote, "BIBI NETANYAHU WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!" He added that if Israel chose "the wrong Leader, which would be anyone other than Bibi," the United States would have to confront Iran alone, "and I am not inclined to do so." Days earlier he had said he hadn't even thought about an endorsement.

Sam Going from not having thought about it to a full endorsement within days is quick. Did he stop there, or did he keep weighing in as the vote got closer? I'd also like to know what the Iran language meant in practice.

Maya He posted again on Sunday, October 26: "Vote for Bibi Netanyahu for Prime Minister, we have to finish the job that we started!" Reuters reported that line, and also that Trump and Netanyahu launched a war against Iran jointly in February 2026. Netanyahu has campaigned on the endorsement.

Sam Hearing that, I picture a new round of fighting being planned for after the vote. What did Netanyahu say on the campaign trail, and did anyone in Washington respond to it?

Maya Netanyahu said Trump was willing to take action "that would finally, finally, remove the Iranian threat," but only if Netanyahu stayed in power. He also said, "I have already instructed the Mossad and the IDF to bring down this regime." That is his claim about his own orders, not an announced joint operation. On October 26, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly emailed Reuters: "The United States will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the midterm elections." Those are the American votes on November 3. She said a blockade would remain in force.

Sam Two messages pointing different ways: one campaign line about finishing a job, one email ruling out an attack for now. Then there's a report from The New York Times about Israeli generals, which I'd like to understand.

Maya The Times reported on October 26, citing three senior Israeli defense officials and others speaking anonymously, that Netanyahu had for weeks sought a new strike on Iran. The report said he met resistance from the IDF chief of staff, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, who later worried Netanyahu was pushing a lesser action that could provoke an Iranian attack. The Times noted a return to war could have disrupted the election. Defense Minister Israel Katz called reports of a rift "completely baseless and false" and said, "We have not initiated and are not initiating a campaign in Iran before the election." Netanyahu's spokespeople didn't immediately comment to the Times.

Sam Moving to what happens once polls close tonight: if the numbers are as tight as we heard, does somebody just take over at midnight?

Maya No, it's a timetable. The president gives a first candidate 28 days to form a government, with a possible 14-day extension. A second candidate can then get 28 days. If that fails, 61 Knesset members can, within a further period, ask the president to assign someone else. The Israel Democracy Institute has said the process has historically taken between 20 and 100 days. Until a new government is sworn in, the outgoing one stays. If every attempt fails, there's another election, and Netanyahu remains caretaker prime minister.

Sam Think about what that means for him: if his bloc loses but nobody can build a majority, he is still in the job. Does anyone on the Israeli side say they'll try to avoid that outcome?

Maya President Isaac Herzog has. JNS quoted him: "I really, truly will do all I can so there won't be repeat elections." A budget deadline in the spring of 2027 adds pressure, since failing to pass a budget can itself dissolve the Knesset.

Sam Anthropic's stock market filing came out this week, and I keep hearing it described as the first real look inside one of the big AI labs. Before the risks and the valuation, I'd like to know who is actually paying this company. Is it mostly a handful of giant clients?

Maya The filing, as CNN reported it, counts more than 14,000 enterprise customers. About 250 of them each bring in $10 million or more in annual revenue. Other analyses of the same document cut the base differently: more than 11,900 customers at $100,000 or more in trailing revenue, meaning the past twelve months, and more than 1,900 at $1 million or more. A year earlier, the $100,000 group was a little over 950.

Sam Two numbers, 14,000 and 11,900, both described as customers. That looks like a contradiction to me, and I'd guess one of them is simply wrong.

Maya Neither is wrong. They are different slices of one customer list. The 14,000 is all enterprise customers, and the 11,900 is only those spending at least $100,000. The 250 at the top matches in both. The striking part is the growth: the $100,000-plus group went from just over 950 to more than 11,900 in a year, roughly twelve times as many.

Sam Those are all businesses. What about ordinary people using the Claude app on their phones? I'd expect that side to be much smaller.

Maya CNN, citing the research firm Sensor Tower, said the Claude app had more than 67 million monthly active users in the third quarter of 2026. A year earlier it was 9.4 million, about a sevenfold rise. Treat it as an estimate of people opening the app, not a count of paying subscribers.

Sam Fine, that figure says people open it, which doesn't prove they pay. Is there any number on who is paying, and how it compares with OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT?

Maya CNN, citing the expense-management firm Ramp, said 43.8 percent of U.S. businesses in Ramp's data paid Anthropic in September, against 40.6 percent for OpenAI. It's a sample of Ramp's customers, not a census of all businesses. Still, it's the first time a major outlet has put Anthropic narrowly ahead of OpenAI among businesses paying.

Sam Say a company has a few hundred employees and uses Claude for coding help. A number like that tells me nothing about whether Anthropic makes money on each worker it hires.

Maya The filing offers one measure. As CNN reported it, revenue per employee rose from $1.4 million in September 2025 to more than $6.6 million in September 2026. The company is still adding staff, so that figure will fall if headcount catches up with the revenue jump.

Sam Now the money side. The company is clearly asking investors for a lot, and I want to know what price they're hoping for, and who ends up in charge.

Maya The private marker is a $65 billion raise in May 2026 at a $965 billion valuation. The IPO price isn't in the filing. Reuters reported on October 26 that some investors were discussing about $1.5 trillion, down from roughly $2 trillion a week earlier. The New York Times reported $1.5 trillion to $1.7 trillion. These are targets floated by people around the deal, not a price.

Sam A buyer of the stock would own a slice of a company worth that much, so I assume they'd get a say in how it's run, like any other shareholder.

Maya Not much of one. The AP reported that the seven co-founders keep 50.1 percent of the shareholder vote through a special class of shares. Public investors get one vote per Class A share. A Long-Term Benefit Trust, meant to keep financial interests from overriding safety, can appoint directors. A buyer gets the economics more than control, which is legal and is also the criticism.

Sam Two things I keep circling are the risk section and the computing bills. How long is the warning section, and what does it say the company fears?

Maya CNN counted 93 pages of risk factors, against about 30 for Snap and about 50 for Uber. It sorts AI risk into misuse, loss of human control, authoritarian abuse and economic disruption. The AP reported warnings that models could "pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity." On computing, the New York Times reported plans to spend up to $807 billion over the next decade. Revenue is usage-based and can slow, while a take-or-pay compute contract, one you pay for whether or not you use it, does not.

Sam I've heard plenty, so here's my question: what is the one thing to keep from the whole episode?

Maya Both stories turn on a vote whose result is not yet known. Israel's count begins tonight, and Anthropic's price is still a target, not a number. Hold the figures as claims and wait for the result.

Sam That's our show for today. This episode is AI-generated, the voices are synthetic, and the facts come from the reporting named in our closing note, whose authors are not affiliated with this show. The next episode arrives tomorrow, same time.

Maya Thanks for listening, and we'll be back tomorrow with the next two stories that everyone will be talking about, so come back and keep up with us.

Sam Everything today came from reporting by CNN, Reuters, the Associated Press, The New York Times, the Financial Times, PitchBook, The Times of Israel, JNS, and the Jerusalem Post.