IBM becomes latest AI victim! Stock price plunges 11% amid threat from Anthropic programming language
Impacted by Anthropic's announcement that its Claude model now supports COBOL-related capabilities, International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) has become the latest casualty in the rapid iteration of AI technology, with its share price suffering a heavy blow.
On Monday afternoon, IBM's stock price plunged by 11%. Previously, Anthropic unveiled a new application scenario for its Claude Code product: automatically completing the most complex code analysis and exploration tasks in COBOL modernization.
COBOL (short for Common Business-Oriented Language) is a decades-old programming language widely used in commercial data processing, which is IBM's core business sector. Many transaction systems today still run on COBOL, including payment processing and retail transaction systems, making it a key target for cost-effective AI-driven modernization.
In a blog post on Monday, Anthropic mentioned, for example, that about 95% of ATM transactions in the United States are handled by COBOL.
"Every day, hundreds of billions of lines of COBOL code run in production environments, supporting critical systems in finance, aviation, government, and other sectors. Nevertheless, the number of people truly proficient in this language is decreasing year by year," Anthropic wrote in the blog. "AI is extremely good at simplifying tasks that once made COBOL modernization prohibitively expensive."
The article further explains that Claude Code can assist in modernizing COBOL codebases: mapping dependencies among thousands of lines of code, documenting workflows, and identifying risk points that "would take human analysts months to discover."
"Legacy code modernization has stalled for years because understanding old code is often more costly than rewriting it. AI has completely changed this situation."
IBM has become the latest stock to decline due to concerns over AI. In recent weeks, news about AI has continued to disrupt investors, leading the market into a volatile environment of 'sell first, ask questions later.' Last Friday, after Anthropic announced the addition of code security scanning to Claude Code, the share prices of several cybersecurity companies dropped sharply, and the sector remained under pressure in Monday's trading.
Monday's sell-off has caused IBM's share price to drop nearly 22% so far this year.
Editor: Ding Wenwu
Disclaimer: The content of this article solely reflects the author's opinion and does not represent the platform in any capacity. This article is not intended to serve as a reference for making investment decisions.
You may also like
Dell executive: "Agent AI" is different this time, key components (mainly memory and HDD) shortages may last for more than 5 years
Dell Technologies Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke stated that proxy AI, by taking on more tasks, continues to drive up computing and storage demands, making this AI infrastructure cycle distinct from traditional hardware upgrade cycles. By 2030, data center computing power is expected to increase by 200 GW, inference token generation will grow 87-fold, and infrastructure demand is likely to continue expanding.
Morgan Stanley Backs Meta (META.US): Muse Ecosystem Continues to Expand, VR Glasses Expected to Become a New Growth Point in 2027
Morgan Stanley maintains an "Overweight" rating on Meta with a target price of $775, and continues to list it as a top pick.
Essay: The Next Step in AI Investment—Who Can Turn Computing Power into Profit?
Meta (META.US) surged 36% in September: Muse validates AI strategy, market cap targets $2 trillion
Meta's stock is on track to achieve its best monthly performance since July 2013, and is only about a 1% increase away from joining the $2 trillion market cap club.
Crypto prices
More
