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Artificial intelligence is about to change how entrepreneurs start companies—and the odds of making them successful.

Systems such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing and Google’s Bard can assist in almost every step of devising a startup, from coming up with an idea and testing it to performing consumer research and creating a marketing plan. They do those jobs faster and more efficiently than an individual could, and in ways that a human isn’t capable of carrying out.

“In 12 months, it’s going to be a very different way of starting a company,” says Steve Blank, a longtime entrepreneur who helped launch tech companies including MIPS and Convergent Technologies, and is an investor in an AI cancer-diagnosis company.

Below are some of the ways AI can aid entrepreneurs—as well as some caveats about the technology’s limitations.

Finding an unmet need is the first step in creating a startup. It takes inspiration and intuition, careful research and the balancing of risk and reward. And it may turn out that AI can do this faster and more efficiently than any human ever could.

Such systems “could eventually become some of the best identifiers of unmet human needs in history,” says David Schonthal, director of entrepreneurship programs at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

That is because AI can absorb vast amounts of information and sort through it to figure out what people might want in the marketplace. “AI reads a bunch of data to identify patterns in that data, it acts upon what it senses and then it learns based on what it puts out in the world,” Schonthal says.

That is what entrepreneurs do, he says. But entrepreneurs “are limited by the constraints of their own capacity, their own reach and their biases,” he says. “AIs have an exponentially wider set of data to learn from.”

For instance, an entrepreneur could ask an AI system to identify problems consumers face in using certain products or services, and then have it suggest solutions, says Ethan Mollick, an associate professor who teaches innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. The entrepreneur could add limiting factors, such as the cost of each proposed solution. The system may come up with dozens of ideas and variations that an entrepreneur may not have considered, Mollick says.

AI can also help focus an idea. AI systems can be asked questions and then respond: For instance, entrepreneurs can ask the AI to refine its answers, such as to consider a different variable in a startup proposal like whether a product would be popular abroad or whether it could be priced higher. Or entrepreneurs can ask an AI to give an example of a similar product that thrived—or flopped.

“It’s like having the best business-school coach you could have,” says Blank, the entrepreneur.

Sure, entrepreneurs may think they have a smart idea for a startup. But perhaps a dozen people already have thought of it. The vast databases that AI systems draw from can provide a bigger research reach than typical internet searches.

Using AI, entrepreneurs can see what has been reported about a business concept in technical reports, financial filings and news articles. They can scan marketing and consumer surveys and check what has been said on social media about related startups. They can see what types of startups were failures and which have thrived.

Even if entrepreneurs think their startup idea is smart and investment-worthy, they need to test their hunch. AI could help by playing the part of a customer based on a digital persona founders give it.

For example, if a company concept involves the dental industry, entrepreneurs could tell an AI system to pretend it is a dentist with 20 years of experience who runs their own practice. Then the entrepreneur would ask questions about what constraints the “dentist” faces in doing the job and whether the proposed product or service would help.

“You can have a reasonable interview with it,” Mollick says of the dentist persona. “You will not get the same stuff you get out of a human. But if it helps you refine an idea, it’s really valuable.”

The negligible cost and great speed of AI testing is a plus, says Blank. “I could run experiments against hundreds of thousands of different personas simultaneously and I could create websites with artificial products that I could test,” he says.

Moreover, an AI-based system could boost the use of “A/B” testing, in which two or more versions of a website or product promotion are put online to see which generates greater or more positive response. AI could create numerous versions of the tests, promote them through social media and targeted advertising, and then constantly refine the tests based on the responses, says Northwestern’s Schonthal.

AI could also help devise and critique the business pitches that entrepreneurs send to venture capitalists. And it could help an entrepreneur figure out which VC firms are funding what types of startups—and which they are rejecting.

Mollick had one of his classes create startup proposals, then had an AI system—instructed to act like a venture capitalist—critique them. The AI system told the students whether it thought the proposals were unique, potentially profitable, addressed a market need and whether they adequately accounted for factors such as competition and the ability to scale up.

“I had a real VC critiquing them and then the AI VC critiquing them,” Mollick says, and the real VC thought the AI critiques were on the mark.

Once a company is funded, it needs to get promoted. Mollick ran an experiment to see how AI could assist in promoting an educational game. “What it accomplished was superhuman,” he says.

First, he asked Bing to find detailed information about the game, an online tool created by Wharton for teaching leadership to business students. Next, he told Bing to pretend it was a marketing expert and come up with a proposed promotional campaign. It produced a credible plan, including identifying the target audience and creating four sample emails touting the game to business educators.

In just 30 minutes, the AI systems that he used “did market research, created a positioning document, wrote an email campaign, created a website [for the product], created a logo and ‘hero shot’ [large centerpiece] graphic, made a social-media campaign for multiple platforms, and scripted and created a video,” Mollick said in a blog post describing the experiment.

Without AI tools, it would have taken him “many hours, maybe days of work,” he wrote.

Yet as with all users of AI, entrepreneurs need to be cautious. These systems are notorious for “hallucinations”—giving answers that sound authoritative but are misleading or even made up. What they spew out needs to be verified, experts say.

“I wouldn’t trust any numbers it’s giving you,” Mollick says.

AI presents another concern: It could come up with ideas that are “literal and obvious, which is a way to not necessarily be successful,” says Northwestern’s Schonthal. “What AIs will do is sense what people say they want, which is often different from what they truly desire.”

As a hypothetical example, an AI system could discover that sales of cheese are rising, and in response propose creating a new cheese-distribution system instead of “a truly innovative new business,” Schonthal says. “That abstract piece of the process is still a uniquely human capability.”

Moreover, most AI systems are “trained” on databases of things that happened in the past. “Good entrepreneurs are the ones that are thinking about what might happen in the future,” he says.

The move will make Sampo the largest pure property and casualty insurer in the region

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Low interest rates largely explain the poor performance of life insurers over the past decade. Add low premium growth in developed economies to that and a change of gear at Finland’s Sampo makes sense.

On Monday, the Helsinki-based business completed the demerger of its life business Mandatum, whose shares valued the spin-off at €1.9bn. A dip in Sampo shares suggested little value creation on the day, yet a broader plan to focus on non-life sectors still deserves credit.

The move will make Sampo the largest pure property and casualty insurer in the Nordic region. The shares, along with those of peer Tryg, have long commanded a sizeable premium over the broader European insurance sector. Combined ratios for both close to 80 per cent reflect disciplined underwriting. Capital releases for shareholders will cement the spin-off’s logic.

The turnaround in interest rates is already helping. Sampo estimated its Solvency Capital Ratio would be 193 per cent following the split, at the top end of its targeted range. Higher rates mean insurers need to hold less capital against liabilities anyway. But shedding life exposures will also mean lower targeted capital and a surplus for shareholders. A 10 percentage point fall in targeted SCR would mean about €300mn of returns for Sampo shareholders. 

The story at Mandatum is similar. The standalone life business will generate capital in two ways. First, from its growth business managing pension assets for corporate clients. Second, from winding down an old back book of with-profits policies, generating capital as it does.

Mandatum’s standalone SCR is now at about 232 per cent. A target range of between 170-200 per cent is expected in the medium term. Even at the top end of that would mean an extra €300mn to come back to shareholders on top.

Add that on to the €500mn the company expects to return on ordinary dividends over the next three years and the annual yield moves to 15 per cent. Even in the higher rate environment, that should attract interest.

Albemarle’s margin for victory over buying lithium miner reduces every time Hancock increases its stake

Gina Rinehart made her billions from heavy metals. Australia’s richest person seeks one of the lightest, lithium. Her privately held iron ore miner Hancock Prospecting has built a 12.4 per cent stake in locally-listed Liontown Resources. She could block a proposed A$6.6bn ($4.3bn) takeover by Albemarle of the US.

Lithium carbonate prices may have crashed, down 68 per cent year on year. Demand for this key battery input will not do so in the long term. Electric vehicles depend on cells using lithium. Australia offers an important supply.

Rinehart has a reported worth of more than A$34bn. Hancock has plenty of firepower of its own. It last reported more than A$17bn of net cash with billions more piling up annually. Liontown, worth a third of that, sits on Australia’s fifth-largest lithium resource.

Rinehart set her cap at Liontown months ago. Keen to diversify from iron ore, she has been accumulating shares since early April, according to local filings. Her in-price sits below Albemarle’s latest agreed offer of A$3.00 a share.

Rinehart’s stake could yet climb over the current A$800mn. Under deal terms so far, the Albemarle takeover would require 75 per cent approval from shareholders. A vote will not happen until the board recommends the deal. It may not occur until next year, if at all.

Albemarle’s margin for victory reduces every time Hancock increases its stake. This occurred five times last month alone. If it goes over 20 per cent, a mandatory bid would be required. Team Rinehart has intimated it will not pay more than A$3.00 a share. Albemarle could raise its offer to tempt Reinhart to sell. Or perhaps it can work with Hancock as a minority investor.

That is possible. Lithium projects, given the mining and processing skills required, do suit partnerships. Albemarle has one at Wodgina, a larger local lithium project.

Either way, Liontown shareholders have nothing to lose as two industry heavyweights vie for their favour.

Agricultural trading groups slip from record highs

Louis Dreyfus Company, one of the world’s biggest traders of coffee, sugar and wheat, suffered a fall in profits and sales as the boost from price volatility because of the war in Ukraine faded in its main markets.

The Switzerland-based trader generated net profits of $568mn in the first half of 2023, down from $662mn for the same period last year, while the group’s sales fell from $30.3bn to $25.8bn.

The profits of agricultural trading groups have slipped from the record highs seen in the past two years but they are still well above historical levels.

The Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a major supplier of grain and oilseeds to international markets, disrupted global supplies, sending food prices soaring and threatening a hunger crisis in many parts of the world. But for agricultural trading houses the volatility boosted sales and profits.

LDC’s net profit increased by 44 per cent in 2022 to more than $1bn, up from $697mn in 2021, as net sales went up by more than a fifth.

Prices of key agricultural commodities have since stabilised, with Chicago wheat futures falling from a peak of more than $13 a bushel in March 2022 to below $5.80 last month. Operating costs, meanwhile, have risen, slightly damping the performance of traders.

LDC’s chief rivals Archer-Daniels-Midland, ADM, and Bunge posted a decline in their second-quarter profits over the summer and last month Cargill, the largest privately held US company, reported a drop in profits of 43 per cent for its fiscal year ending May 31, according to documents seen by Bloomberg. 

But ADM and Bunge still beat analysts' expectations, with ADM posting adjusted earnings per share of $1.89, down only slightly from $2.5 in the second quarter of 2022, when the firm generated its highest-ever profits.

Despite declining profits, Cargill’s annual revenue also rose by 7.1 per cent to a record $176.7bn, according to Bloomberg.

LDC attributed its buoyant profits to high crop yields in Brazil and ample demand from China.

“While international trade flows progressively adapted to last year’s turbulent environment, some challenges persisted into 2023 — a context in which LDC pursued its focus on keeping essential food, feed, fibre and ingredient supply chains moving safely, reliably and responsibly,” said LDC’s chief executive Michael Gelchie in a statement.

Although prices of wheat and corn have fallen, the cost of other commodities traded by the group, such as sugar, rice and citrus fruit, have climbed recently as a result of the El Niño sea temperature phenomenon and rising temperatures due to climate change.

German sandal maker sets price range for New York float next week

German sandal maker Birkenstock is set to be valued at more than $9bn in an initial public offering this month, the latest sign of a revival in the US market for new listings after a dearth of deals since the start of 2022.

Birkenstock said in an updated prospectus that it would sell stock at between $44 and $49 per share, which would raise up to $1.6bn for the company and its private equity owner L Catterton.

At the top of the price range, Birkenstock would have an initial market capitalisation of $9.2bn based on outstanding shares after the offering, or $9.9bn on a fully diluted basis.

L Catterton, which is backed by French luxury fashion house LVMH, is expected to list the business next week.

About a third of the proceeds of the deal will go to Birkenstock, which said it would use the funds to repay debt, with the rest going to L Catterton.

The company and its advisers have lined up anchor investors for the deal. Financière Agache, the family holding company of LVMH chief executive Bernard Arnault, has indicated an interest in purchasing up to $325mn of shares.

Arnault’s son Alexandre is expected to join the company’s board of directors following the IPO, according to the filing.

The Norwegian sovereign wealth fund and Durable Capital Partners plan to buy up to a further $300mn of shares.

The company almost had its plans to list thrown off course by a US government shutdown, which was narrowly averted when lawmakers reached a last-minute deal over the weekend.

Birkenstock, which traces its roots back to 1774, took private equity money for the first time when L Catterton bought a majority stake in a €4bn deal in 2021.

It reported revenues of €1.1bn in the nine months to the end of June, up 21 per cent year on year. However, net profits dropped 20 per cent to €103mn.

It is set to be the third-largest US listing of the year so far, according to Dealogic data.

Bankers have been hoping a successful deal from a well-known consumer brand such as Birkenstock will provide a further boost to the market after a string of tech listings in September.

“It will be important as it’s a different sector, so it gives a broader set of data [to encourage other potential IPO candidates],” said one senior IPO banker.

Arm, Instacart and Klaviyo all priced deals at the top of or above their target ranges last month, though trading in the stocks has been mixed in the weeks since. Overall, companies have raised $17.4bn in US IPOs so far this year, up more than 140 per cent from the same period last year.

Clandestine contacts over the decades have been spurred on by common enemies, whether Egypt in the past or Iran and Hezbollah now, but Israel reportedly missed chances to make peace

If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clinches a peace agreement with the Saudis, he’ll have his diplomatic skills to thank, but also a century of clandestine ties that have ranged from intelligence sharing to secret peace initiatives.

It all started in 1928. Eliahu Epstein – later Hebrew University President Eliahu Eilat – was a student of Middle Eastern studies at the Jerusalem-based university. He proposed that archaeologists from the school be sent to the Khaybar oasis in the Arabian Peninsula, where Jews had lived until the seventh century at the dawn of Islam.

The university’s president, Judah Magnes, took up the gauntlet and hoped to make contact through the British with Ibn Saud, who would found the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia four years later. But the British refused.

“With that, the possibility, even in secret, of a first Jewish-Saudi encounter was shelved,” wrote Elie Podeh, a professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies at Hebrew University. Podeh was writing in his 2022 Hebrew-language book “From Mistress to Common-Law Wife” about Israel's secret ties with countries and minorities of the Middle East.

The contacts with the Saudis perhaps shouldn’t come as much of a surprise – they and the Israelis have had mutual enemies; for example, formerly with Egypt and currently with Iran. Publicly, the Saudi royal court was hostile toward Judaism and Zionism.

“The leaders of Saudi Arabia adhered to a realistic and pragmatic approach toward the Jews in Palestine and later toward the existence of a Jewish state,” Podeh wrote. Sometimes it was the Saudis who put up obstacles, sometimes the Israelis.

Podeh believes that Israel missed out on chances to upgrade the relationship by ignoring approaches or rejecting them “for reasons that are not understood.” Podeh calls this “surprising and disappointing.”

'Rocky ground'

But let’s get back to Eliahu Epstein, the Hebrew University student. He wasn’t discouraged by the failure of his plan for an archaeological mission at the oasis. In 1937, when he was an official at the Jewish Agency, he met in Beirut with Fuad Hamza, the director general of the Saudi Foreign Ministry. The meeting paved the way for a tête-à-tête between Hamza and David Ben-Gurion, the chairman of the Jewish Agency who would become Israel’s first prime minister.

As Prof. Yehoshua Porath of Hebrew University once described it, “At the meeting Ben-Gurion analyzed the Land of Israel question in the context of ... the Land of Israel being surrounded by Arab countries, whereas for Hamza, the Land of Israel conflict should have been discussed from the viewpoint of the Arabs of the Land of Israel.”

Podeh wrote in his book that “although the positions of the two sides were far apart, the talks helped each side get acquainted with the outlooks and interests of the other.”

Also in 1937, Epstein went to London in the delegation representing British Palestine’s Jewish community at the coronation of King George VI. There, Epstein failed to make contact with the Saudi crown prince, Emir Saud, and King Ibn Saud’s secretary, Yusuf Yasin, who represented the king at the event.

“When Hamza informed Emir Saud about his meeting with Ben-Gurion, Saud boiled with anger and took Hamza to task,” Porath wrote. Moshe Sharett, Israel’s second prime minister who at the time headed the Jewish Agency’s diplomatic department, was also rebuffed when he asked a Saudi diplomat in London if he could make direct contact with the king. Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann, who would become Israel’s first president, also failed.

The historian Harold Armstrong, who had direct access to the Saudi king and approached Ibn Saud on Ben-Gurion’s behalf, wrote to Ben-Gurion that this seed might bear fruit. But Armstrong quipped that the ground was rocky and barren.

During those years, there were also efforts to establish an Arab federation that would include the Land of Israel as a Jewish component. Under one proposal, Ibn Saud would head the federation, an idea promoted by St. John Philby, a British Arab affairs expert who had ties to the royal court.

Plenty of pragmatism

Saudi Arabia has never really taken part in the wars against Israel. The very small force it sent for the War of Independence barely saw action. Ibn Saud opposed the UN Partition Plan that helped establish a Jewish state, but that was mainly due to the monarch’s concerns that Jordan would extend its influence in the Arab world if it controlled the Arab portion of British Palestine. Later, Ibn Saud came to terms with the partition plan.

“The founding father of the Saudi kingdom laid the foundations for its foreign policy, especially regarding Zionism and Israel,” Podeh said of Ibn Saud. “That included a pragmatic political approach not based on a rigid ideological doctrine.”

Ibn Saud’s successor, King Saud, didn’t send forces to help Egypt in Israel’s 1956 Sinai Campaign. Relations had deteriorated between Cairo and Riyadh amid Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s pan-Arab aspirations.

The hostility reached its peak in the ‘60s when Egypt took part in the civil war in Yemen. For the first time, Israel and Saudi Arabia found themselves on the same side, seeking to reduce the Egyptian threat. According to one report, Saudi intelligence chief Kamal Adham was aware that Israeli planes were flying through Saudi airspace on their way to drop ammunition for the royalist forces in Yemen.

During the 1967 Six-Day War, Saudi King Faisal also didn’t send forces to Egypt. And though he publicly made antisemitic remarks, his foreign policy remained pragmatic. Podeh claims that since that war, Saudi Arabia has indirectly recognized Israel within the 1967 borders. There were also reports back then about failed attempts at a dialogue between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

After the war, Baron Edmond de Rothschild met in Paris with Saudi tycoon Adnan Khashoggi, who was close to the royal court, to try to arrange a meeting with King Faisal. Khashoggi demanded legal documentation from Israel’s prime minister, Golda Meir, regarding authority to conduct the negotiations, which was never provided.

Nahik Navot of the Mossad recounted that in 1969, King Faisal proposed talks he hoped would result in a diplomatic agreement. David Kimche, a senior Mossad official and later the director general of the Foreign Ministry, wrote to Navot that “perhaps a vision of dialogue will grow out of the darkness in the corners of Islam, which hates the Jews and Judaism.” But according to Navot, “the Saudi feeler wasn’t followed up.”

Saudi forces scarcely took part in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and during that decade, Khashoggi remained involved in clandestine contacts. His business dealings with Israelis Yaakov Nimrodi and Kimche made him a possible conduit. Kimche gave him information about a plan to undermine the Saudi regime, which Khashoggi promised to send on to Prince Fahd, who later became heir to the throne. Later, via an Arab intelligence agency, Israel gave the Saudis information on an assassination plot against Fahd.

“Under the surface, for a considerable period, limited intelligence exchanges were carried out,” Kimche later said. And the early ‘70s saw efforts to arrange a secret meeting in London between Adham – the Saudi intelligence chief – and Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban. “Everything was ready,” said Efraim Halevy, a former Mossad chief. “But it was early in the morning and my colleague didn’t wake Abba Eban up in time, so he didn’t get to the meeting.”

As Halevy put it, “Maybe everything would look different today. Sometimes that’s how it is. People shouldn’t sleep at the wrong time.”

Turning point

After the historic 1977 election, when Likud’s Menachem Begin became prime minister, Fahd boosted his efforts to make contact with Israel. Begin’s reputation as a strong figure who could lead a peace process contributed. Saudi Arabia also played an important role in pressuring the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel to recognize each other.

That year, Fahd remarked that no one thought about wiping Israel off the map anymore. It was a country that existed in the Middle East. According to Podeh, Saudi intelligence chief Adham “spoke in terms of direct economic and technological cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia,” but Israel’s Foreign Ministry didn’t bite.

In August 1977, an American with close ties to Fahd sent a letter to Israeli lawyer Ze’ev Sher, an associate of Begin’s bureau chief, Yechiel Kadishai. At issue was the feasibility of a Saudi-Israeli agreement.

That December there was another message from the Saudis. A Palestinian journalist with ties to the Saudi royal court was asked to convey a secret message from Fahd to Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan. The Palestinian tried to do so via Rafi Sitton, who worked at the Mossad and the Shin Bet security service.

“The following day, a response was received from the [foreign] minister’s office that it would be impossible to arrange the meeting unless he provided its contents in advance,” Podeh recounted. In his own book, Sitton wrote that he was “totally stunned by the establishment’s complete apathy toward his mission.” It later turned out that Fahd wanted to ask Israel to lift its veto over the sale of F-15 jets to the Saudis.

The year 1981 featured a surprise. Prince Fahd presented a peace initiative requiring an Israeli withdrawal from all the territories it captured in 1967, including East Jerusalem, and the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. Under the plan, all the countries in the region would agree to live in peace, which would mean recognition of Israel.

But Israel rejected the plan out of hand. Begin described it as “a sophisticated and rational system for the total destruction of Israel” and called Saudi Arabia “a desert country where there is still discrimination from the Middle Ages, with the chopping off of hands and heads, with corruption that screams to the heavens.”

Coincidentally, shortly after the peace initiative was made public, Israel and Saudi Arabia found themselves in formal contacts via a third party. This happened in September 1981, when an Israeli missile ship ran aground on the Saudi coast. Defense Minister Ariel Sharon contacted the Americans to coordinate a rescue mission with the Saudis and the matter was resolved peacefully.

Also in the ‘80s, the Mossad had casual contacts with the Saudis. Aharon Scherf, a member of the Mossad division responsible for international relations, said that “there was discrete contact that was kept top secret.” The division's director, Nahum Admoni, remained in contact with Saudi intelligence chief Turki bin Faisal.

In 1983, now-King Fahd privately remarked that Israel was a fact on the ground, while Saudi Arabia wanted to see relations among all the countries of the Middle East, including Israel, so that they could help each other and spend their money on paving roads and building hospitals, not producing weapons.

During the 1991 Gulf War, Israel and Saudi Arabia again faced a common adversary when they both came under missile attack from Iraq. The first public meeting of Israelis and Saudis came the same year at the Middle East peace conference in Madrid. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, represented the Gulf Cooperation Council. “We spoke with Bandar freely,” Eitan Bentzur, the director general of the Foreign Ministry, told Podeh.

By 1995, Scherf had left the Mossad and began work at Yaakov Nimrodi’s firm, Israel Land Development. He set up a meeting with the former Saudi finance minister, who had just left office, to discuss economic projects.

When Netanyahu became prime minister in 1996, the clandestine contacts continued. They included a plan to build a natural gas pipeline from Saudi Arabia to West Bank land controlled by the Palestinian Authority.

In 2002, the Saudi crown prince at the time, Abdullah, presented the Saudi peace initiative that included an Israeli withdrawal from all the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, in exchange for a full normalization between Israel and the Arab world.

“I would further say to the Israeli people that if their government abandons the policy of force and oppression and embraces true peace, we will not hesitate to accept the right of the Israeli people to live in security with the people of the region,” Abdullah declared.

In 2006, after the Second Lebanon War, direct secret talks were held, this time because of two other common enemies of Israel and Saudi Arabia: Iran and Hezbollah. These included discussions between Prince Bandar, then the head of the Saudi National Security Council, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was accompanied by Mossad chief Meir Dagan.

“The meeting marked an upgrade in the ties between the two countries,” Podeh said. “It was the beginning of the coalescing of an anti-Iranian, anti-Shi’ite camp.”

In 2010, Dagan visited Saudi Arabia – the first time that an Israeli official set foot in the kingdom. In 2014, Netanyahu also met with Bandar. In 2020, Netanyahu and then-Mossad chief Yossi Cohen visited Saudi Arabia and met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

But the past few months have been the most intense for advancing ties. They have included the first official visit to Saudi Arabia by an Israeli cabinet member – Tourism Minister Haim Katz – albeit for a UN conference. Then there was the comment by Crown Prince Mohammed: “Every day we get closer” to an agreement with Israel.