International Business Machines (IBM) shares fell sharply on Monday, marking the company’s steepest single-day drop since 2000. The decline followed an announcement from AI startup Anthropic that its Claude Code tool could modernise COBOL, a programming language widely used on IBM mainframes, reports CNA.
On Monday, IBM’s stock plunged 13.2% – its biggest one-day fall since October 18, 2000. As for its CBOL program, it’s stated that COBOL remains critical for systems in banking, insurance and government, where decades-old code underpins key operations.
“Modernising a COBOL system once required armies of consultants spending years mapping workflows,” Anthropic noted. “Tools like Claude Code can automate the exploration and analysis phases that consume most of the effort.”
The company added that AI enables teams to update COBOL codebases in quarters rather than years.
The sell-off in IBM shares comes amid broader market nervousness over the rise of AI tools. Investors have been closely watching Anthropic’s large language model Claude and its newly launched plug-ins, which are viewed as an attempt to establish a new application layer for AI.
Other software and cybersecurity stocks were also affected. Shares of companies including CrowdStrike and Datadog fell as investors assessed the potential implications of Anthropic’s AI tools on the wider technology sector.
