IBM posts steepest daily drop since 2000 after Anthropic says AI can modernise Cobol

Published Tue, Feb 24, 2026 · 12:55 PM

[MEXICO CITY] Shares of International Business Machines (IBM) recorded their steepest daily drop in more than 25 years on Monday (Feb 23), after artificial intelligence (AI) startup Anthropic said that its Claude Code tool could be used to modernise a programming language run on IBM systems.

IBM shares sank 13.2 per cent, their biggest drop since Oct 18, 2000.

Cobol is a programming language widely used on IBM mainframes across banking, insurance and government systems.

“Modernising a Cobol system once required armies of consultants spending years mapping workflows. Tools such as Claude Code can automate the exploration and analysis phases that consume most of the effort in Cobol modernisation,” Anthropic said on Monday.

“With AI, teams can modernise their Cobol codebase in quarters instead of years,” it added.

Software stocks have been battered in recent months by market fears around the growing capabilities of AI tools, particularly following the launch of plug-ins from Anthropic’s large language model Claude, seen as the startup’s push to become an application layer.

SEE ALSO

Navigate Asia in
a new global order

Get the insights delivered to your inbox.

Shares of cybersecurity companies, including CrowdStrike and Datadog, also slumped on Monday, as investors weighed the potential impact of Anthropic’s new security tool on the industry. REUTERS