Democrats Sweep Midterms While Anthropic Files for IPO

Sam Democrats have taken control of Congress in the midterms, and that's the kind of result that changes what the next two years in Washington look like. It's the headline everyone is carrying around today. Maya, can you start with what happened on election night and when the outcome became clear?

Maya Polls closed on Tuesday, November 3rd, and Democrats won both chambers. According to Variety, MS NOW called the House for Democrats just before 10 p.m. Eastern, then CNN, NBC and CBS followed. CNN called the Senate at 11:35 p.m., projecting at least 51 Democratic seats. Time reported that the AP called the Senate late Tuesday and the House in the early hours of Wednesday. These are projections from news organizations, not certified results.

Sam Different networks calling it at different hours is a little odd to me, since it's the same vote count. I'd like to know why the House call came at 10 p.m. from one outlet but in the early hours from the AP. And what had to happen for anyone to call it at all?

Maya Each organization decides for itself when the count is lopsided enough to say a race is won, so the timing differs. For the House, the marker is 218 seats, a majority of the 435. Yahoo News reported that the AP said Democrats had passed that number. Certified results come later, once the official counting is finished, and that's why these are called projections for now.

Sam Before this, Republicans must have held both chambers by some margin, and I'd guess the Senate was the harder one for Democrats to crack. What were the numbers going into Election Day?

Maya Per NBC Washington, Republicans entered Election Day with a 53 to 47 Senate majority and a 219 to 214 House majority. Time said Democrats needed a net gain of four seats on a map that favored Republicans, and that most handicappers, the analysts who rate each race's odds, had treated the Senate as a long shot until weeks before Election Day.

Sam Four seats on a map tilted against them sounds like a tall order, and that's before I hear how it played out. Which Republican-held seats actually flipped?

Maya NBC News projected six flips: North Carolina, where former Governor Roy Cooper won; South Carolina, Annie Andrews; Texas, James Talarico; Ohio, former Senator Sherrod Brown; Kansas, Adam Hamilton; and Iowa, Josh Turek. NBC also projected that Democrat Troy Jackson defeated Republican Senator Susan Collins in Maine. Time's list of flipped states is Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas.

Sam Texas jumps out, because I'd never have pictured Democrats winning a statewide race there. Whoever Talarico beat must have been a fairly big name.

Maya NBC said Talarico beat Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and called it the first statewide Democratic win in Texas since 1994. NPR described the Senate result as a remarkable turnaround, saying Republicans began the year with little expectation that their majority was at risk.

Sam Seven flips from a 47-seat start would land well above 51, yet the figure I keep hearing is 51 seats. Either some of those calls aren't final, or a seat went the other way somewhere. Where does the count actually stand?

Maya Time's Tuesday-evening AP tally had 51 Senate seats called for Democrats and 39 for Republicans, with 10 not yet called. The final split isn't settled. Time said outstanding races such as Michigan could pad the majority. One NBC live-blog headline said Democrat Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan, but the margin and an AP call aren't confirmed, so Michigan stays open for now.

Sam Leadership has to change too if the majority flips. Is anyone already named for the top job in the Senate?

Maya Time and NPR both said Chuck Schumer is poised to replace John Thune as Senate Majority Leader. Schumer would move into the job Thune holds now, since the majority party chooses the leader.

Sam We've got the Senate picture, so let me turn to the House. Democrats needed a majority there, and I'd assume the margin matters for how much they can do. Where does the count stand right now, and are all the networks saying the same thing?

Maya They aren't, because each desk is counting in progress. NBC said Democrats are poised to win at least 258 seats against an estimated 177 Republican seats, with 218 needed for control. Its running tally of called races was 231 Democratic and 144 Republican, including 29 Democratic flips. CNBC's election desk separately projected at least 245 Democratic seats.

Sam Those figures are far apart, 245 on one desk and 258 on another. I'd have guessed one of them is simply wrong, but it sounds like they're measuring different things, one a called count and one a projection of where it ends up.

Maya NBC also said Democrats won districts that Trump carried by 10 points or more in 2024, and that they significantly beat their 2024 presidential margins. The AP reported that Florida Democrats won two House districts that had been redrawn in Republicans' favor.

Sam Redrawn in the Republicans' favor sounds like the map was built to stop exactly this. Why would a district like that matter more than any other seat?

Maya Because redrawing is meant to make a district safer for one party, so winning there means beating the design as well as the opponent. Time called it among the strongest midterm showings for either party in decades.

Sam That's a lot of ground to take in one night, and the governors' races must tell a similar story. Which ones changed hands?

Maya Texas stands out. Per NBC and the Washington Post, Gina Hinojosa defeated Governor Greg Abbott, and the Post called her the state's first Democratic governor in 35 years. Rob Sand won Iowa, which Yahoo News called the first Democratic governor there in 20 years. Keisha Lance Bottoms won Georgia and Amy Acton won Ohio. Yahoo described Bottoms as the first Black woman elected governor in U.S. history, and Acton as Ohio's first woman governor.

Sam Two Democratic governors in Texas and Georgia would have sounded unlikely to me a year ago. It also seems odd that Texas flipped both the Senate seat and the governorship in the same night.

Maya Beyond the flips, Amy Klobuchar won Minnesota, and Josh Shapiro, Katie Hobbs and Wes Moore were reelected. Democrats didn't win everything, though. Republicans held some seats. Byron Donalds won Florida, and Yahoo described him as the state's first Black governor-elect. Tommy Tuberville won Alabama, Marsha Blackburn won Tennessee, and Kelly Ayotte was reelected in New Hampshire.

Sam A single party taking big wins in so many places makes me think people simply showed up in larger numbers than usual. Is there anything in the turnout figures to back that up?

Maya Bloomberg reported on October 30 that more than 48.5 million early votes had surpassed the 2022 midterm record, with Democrats holding a 12-point early-voting advantage. In Harris County, Texas, the Houston Chronicle said over 1,391,000 votes passed its midterm record, against about 1,219,000 in 2018. It added that a record count isn't necessarily record turnout as a share of voters, since registration there is up almost 17% from 2018, to about 2,746,000.

Sam So a bigger crowd doesn't prove a bigger share showed up, because the pool of voters grew as well. That's a useful catch for me, and it makes me want a case where the share itself went up.

Maya South Carolina is one. Fox Carolina reported it passed its 30-year gubernatorial turnout records. As of 6 p.m. Tuesday, 1,927,488 ballots had been cast, which was 56% of registered voters. The previous mark was 54.6% in 2002.

Sam Moving to the other story in the news, an AI company filing to go public. I only know the name from the products, so let me ask plainly: who is filing, where would the shares trade, and what is the date that made this news?

Maya Anthropic, the maker of the Claude AI models. It filed confidentially with the SEC on June 1, then made its S-1 public on Monday, October 26. The S-1 is the registration document a company files before listing its shares. It plans a Nasdaq listing under the ticker ANT. The Hill said it aims to be the first large frontier AI lab to go public.

Sam A company that young going public sounds like it would have to show serious revenue first. Did the new numbers back that up, and what changed in the filing this week?

Maya On Monday, November 2, Anthropic filed an amended S-1 that added third-quarter results. Q3 revenue was about $17 billion. Nine-month revenue was $33.24 billion, which Quartz put at about 1,200% above the same period of 2025. The first-half figure from the original filing was $16.3 billion, so the two pieces add up to roughly that nine-month total.

Sam Those growth percentages are hard to picture, and I'd guess the pace can't hold forever. Is there any sign it is cooling within this year?

Maya Quarter-on-quarter growth slowed to about 47%, down from 144% in Q2 and 132% in Q1, per Quartz. Fortune noted the slowdown but stressed that year-on-year growth is still above 1,000%.

Sam That's easier to hold in my head. Still, a business growing that fast surely makes money. I'd expect profit, but I have a feeling the filing says otherwise.

Maya Operating results turned. Anthropic swung to a $567 million operating loss in Q3 after a $974 million operating profit in Q2, per Fortune and CoinDesk. The filing blamed compute, meaning the computing power for training and running models, bought under short-term commitments. It said that costs significantly more than compute under multi-year deals. Adjusted operating margin was 15%, down from 19%.

Sam So buying computing power at the last minute is like paying walk-up prices instead of a negotiated contract. Is that the only thing squeezing the numbers, or is something happening with what customers pay?

Maya There's a second piece. The filing said price cuts and contractual discounts reduced revenue by about $600 million between Q2 and Q3. Fortune said this hints at pricing pressure from competitors. Separately, BeInCrypto calculated that compute costs rose 77.5% against 46.7% revenue growth. That's its own calculation, not Anthropic's.

Sam Then there's the headline loss number, which I gather is far larger than an operating loss of a few hundred million. Why the gap? Is the company really burning that much cash?

Maya The net loss was $23.29 billion in Q3 and about $104 billion over nine months, but most of it is non-cash. About $21.9 billion of the Q3 loss, or 94%, was a fair-value charge on convertible notes, which are debts that can turn into shares, and related instruments.

Sam That makes the loss less frightening, though I'm now wondering about future bills. Computing power sounds like something you have to pay for ahead of time. What is Anthropic on the hook for?

Maya Purchase and lease commitments for computing total $895.4 billion, with $69.8 billion due within 12 months of September 30, per CoinDesk. The first S-1 showed $417 billion in compute commitments at December 31, 2025.

Sam Now the question every investor will ask. What would one share cost, and what is the company worth on paper?

Maya The price range and share count are blank in the S-1, and Anthropic has not confirmed any IPO valuation. Reuters and IFR reported talk of $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion. Its last private round was $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation on May 28. Timing is unconfirmed too: Yahoo Finance cited the WSJ and Reuters for a debut as soon as the week of November 16.

Sam Before I get to sign-off, I want the pushback. Has anyone argued against this listing, and on what grounds?

Maya New York City Comptroller Mark Levine wrote to CEO Dario Amodei urging him to pause the IPO until safety, governance and pace concerns are addressed. CNN reported that founders hold majority control, and a Long-Term Benefit Trust of five experts with no financial stake can appoint directors. The filing says the trust may have interests that differ from shareholders'. The central question is whether a safety-focused company can answer to public shareholders.

Sam Last thing from me. For each of today's two stories, what's the one thing to keep? I'm starting with the election and then this filing.

Maya On the election, keep that Democrats were projected to win both chambers, with the final seat counts still moving as counting continues. On Anthropic, keep that the price range, share count, valuation and listing date are not yet public, while the Q3 numbers show fast growth alongside a swing to an operating loss.

Sam That's our show for today. One more thing: this program is AI-generated, the voices are synthetic, and the facts come from the sources named in the closing note, whose authors are not affiliated with us. The next episode arrives tomorrow. Thanks for listening.

Maya Thanks for spending your time with us today, and we'll be back tomorrow with the next two stories everyone is talking about, so come back and catch up with us then.

Maya Everything today came from reporting by NBC News, NPR, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Fox News, PBS, Fortune, Quartz, CoinDesk, BeInCrypto, CNN, the AP, Time, Bloomberg, Reuters, The Hill, and MobiHealthNews.