Anthropic releases "disruptive" AI tool again IBM Corp(IBM.US) stock price plunges over 13%

The sell-off in the software sector triggered by artificial intelligence continues.

On Monday, IBM Corp (IBM.US) stock plummeted sharply after AI startup Anthropic released another new tool considered “disruptive” by the market, further fueling investor concerns about traditional software business models.

That day, IBM dropped over 13%, closing at $223.35. Previously, Anthropic announced an update to its Claude model, introducing a new feature that significantly reduces maintenance and analysis costs for COBOL systems. COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) is not widely known among the general public but has been extensively used for critical systems in banking, aviation, and government for many years, forming a key part of IBM’s enterprise services.

Anthropic emphasized in its blog that COBOL is “ubiquitous” in the real world, with about 95% of ATM transactions in the U.S. relying on this language. Billions of lines of COBOL code support core systems in finance, aviation, and government daily. However, the number of people who truly understand and can maintain such code is decreasing year by year.

The company stated that Claude’s new tool can automatically identify potential risks, noting that “these issues often take months to discover through manual analysis.” In Anthropic’s view, AI can enable companies to analyze and optimize COBOL systems at a fraction of the previous cost, greatly reducing reliance on traditional IT services and consulting.

Market concerns center on the possibility that these AI applications could directly threaten IBM and other companies’ long-standing reliance on legacy system maintenance, data services, and consulting businesses. Anthropic bluntly stated in its blog that, over the years, progress in modernizing legacy code has been slow because “understanding old code is often more costly than rewriting it,” and AI is “completely changing this cost structure.”

In fact, earlier this month, when Anthropic launched an AI plugin for the legal industry, it triggered a concentrated sell-off in the legal tech and software sectors on Wall Street. Although tech stocks rebounded afterward, the market was under pressure again on Monday, indicating that investors remain concerned about AI’s ongoing erosion of traditional software profit models.

Aside from Anthropic’s news, the software and tech sectors showed signs of fatigue in early trading. The three major indices closed lower on Monday, with the tech sector generally declining. Analysts pointed out that as AI tools continue to penetrate core enterprise systems, the market is reassessing the long-term moat of traditional software and IT service companies. The sharp decline in IBM’s stock may just be another reflection of this AI-driven adjustment in the software sector.