IBM Shares Plunge 13.2% After AI Threat to Core COBOL Business
IBM suffered its worst trading day since October 2000 as shares cratered 13.2% following Anthropic's announcement that its Claude AI can now streamline COBOL code. The legacy programming language has been a cornerstone of IBM's enterprise software offerings for decades.
The selloff reflects mounting investor concerns about AI's disruptive potential in enterprise technology. Anthropic's breakthrough eliminates a key competitive moat for IBM, whose stock had already underperformed the broader market amid its slow pivot to cloud computing and AI.
Trading volume spiked to 300% of the 30-day average as the news spread through financial circles. The MOVE index, which tracks expected stock volatility, jumped 15 basis points on the session.