AI
AI
AI
Shares of IBM Corp., DoorDash Inc. and other software companies closed lower today following another broad decline in tech stocks.
The selloff is the latest in a series to have hit the information technology industry since Anthropic PBC released Claude Workspace plugins on Jan. 30. A plugin is a collection of prompts, datasets and scripts that customizes Claude’s behavior. Anthropic released more than a half-dozen plugins spanning use cases such as sales, marketing and project management.
The launch caused a selloff in the shares of enterprise software companies focused on the same use cases as Anthropic’s plugins. Shortly thereafter, the artificial intelligence developer debuted a tool called Claude Code Security that can scan application code for vulnerabilities. CrowdStrike Holdings Inc., Cloudflare Inc. and several other cybersecurity providers closed lower the day the tool was announced.
Today’s selloff appears to have been caused by multiple factors. One of them is a blog post that Anthropic published this morning about Claude’s code modernization capabilities. The company explained how developers can use the AI service to port applications written in COBOL, a legacy programming language, to more modern technologies.
Many COBOL applications run on mainframes. IBM, the world’s largest mainframe supplier by a wide margin, closed 13% lower today. The selloff also impacted large technology service providers such as Accenture plc and Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., which dropped 6 and 6.6%, respectively. The two companies provide COBOL application modernization services that some investors believe could be disrupted by AI.
There were also other factors at play behind today’s share declines.
Over the weekend, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down most of the tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump last year. In response, Trump announced plans to impose 10% duty on all imports starting this Wednesday. He later increased the rate to 15%. The European Union and India reacted to the move by suspending trade agreement discussions with the U.S.
Separately, a little-known analyst firm called Citrini Research published a blog post about the potential market impact of AI. The piece includes a fictional market report dated June 2028. The report outlines a hypothetical scenario in which “AI capabilities improved, companies needed fewer workers, white collar layoffs increased, displaced workers spent less, margin pressure pushed firms to invest more in AI.”
Citrini Research’s blog post describes the report as a “thought exercise” and as a “scenario, not a prediction.” Nevertheless, several of the tech companies that the piece argued could be disrupted by AI saw their shares drop today. DoorDash closed 6.6% lower while Visa Inc., American Express Inc., tech investor Apollo Global Management Inc. and several others also logged single-digit declines.
The S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average and tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropped more than 1%.
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