IBM stock drops 13% as Anthropic announces Claude can automate COBOL modernization
IBM shares had their worst day in over 25 years after Anthropic published a blog post showing how Claude Code can automate COBOL system modernization. COBOL handles an estimated 95% of US ATM transactions, but the shrinking pool of developers who understand the language makes maintenance costly.
The selloff extended the AI-driven software rout that hit markets in early February. Anthropic claims its tool can identify risks in legacy codebases that would take human analysts months to surface, directly threatening IBM's core business data services.
View full digest for February 24, 2026