IBM is the latest AI casualty. Shares are tanking 11% on Anthropic programming language threat

International Business Machines Shares soar after Anthropic’s Claude unveils COBOL capabilities, becoming the latest casualty of rapidly evolving AI technology.

IBM’s shares fell 11% in Monday afternoon trading after Anthropic outlined a new use case for its Claude Code product: automating the discovery and analysis work that drives much of the complexity in COBOL modernization.

COBOL is a programming language widely used in business data processing, one of IBM’s core business areas. COBOL, short for Common Business Oriented Language, was developed in the 1950s and continues to power systems responsible for large volumes of transactions, including payment processing and retail transaction systems.

In a blog post on Monday, Anthropic wrote that COBOL handles estimating 95% of ATM transactions for example in the USA. “Hundreds of billions of COBOL lines are running in production every day, powering critical systems in finance, airlines, and government. Yet the number of people who understand it is decreasing every year,” Anthropic said. blog post reader.

The post continued: “Modernization of legacy code stalled for years because it was more expensive to understand legacy code than to rewrite it. AI is turning that equation on its head.” He then explained that Claude Code can help modernize COBOL codebases by mapping dependencies across thousands of lines of code, documenting workflows, and identifying risks that “will take months for human analysts to surface.”

IBM is the latest stock to fall on AI fears that have roiled investors in recent weeks and contributed to the volatile “sell first, ask questions later” trading environment.

A number of cybersecurity companies fell on Friday after Anthropic announced a new capability it has integrated into Claude Code, called Claude Code Security. This capability can scan code bases for vulnerabilities and find software vulnerabilities for people to examine, he said. The sector continued to remain under pressure in Monday’s session.

Monday’s sell-off has sent IBM shares down nearly 22% year to date.

— The story is developing. Check back here for updates.