IBM is the latest AI casualty. Shares are tanking 13% on Anthropic programming language threat
IBM shares cratered 13% on Monday after Anthropic announced that Claude Code can automate COBOL modernization — the complex, expensive process of understanding and migrating legacy code that has been a core IBM business for decades. With an estimated 95% of US ATM transactions still running on COBOL and the pool of developers who understand it shrinking every year, Anthropic argues AI can now do in hours what human analysts took months to accomplish. It's the latest in a string of AI-triggered selloffs — cybersecurity stocks also took a hit last Friday after Anthropic's Claude Code Security launch — and a stark reminder that no legacy tech business is safe from disruption.