Explained: How IBM share price's 13% plunge on Anthropic's COBOL disruption fears sparked bloodbath in TCS, Infosys, Wipro & other IT stocks

Shares of major information technology companies came under pressure on February 24, falling as much as 8%, after a sharp decline in IBM on Wall Street unsettled investors. The stock tumbled 13%, its worst single-day fall in 25 years, after AI startup Anthropic said that its Claude tool can help streamline COBOL code. COBOL, short for Common Business-Oriented Language, is widely used in business data processing and continues to power critical systems across banks, governments and airlines on IBM mainframes. The development raised concerns about potential disruption to IBM's core revenue streams, sending the stock to its worst single-day decline since October 2000. The sentiment spilled over into Indian IT stocks. Coforge, Persistent Systems and HCLTech led the losses with declines of about 7-8%. Shares of Infosys, Tech Mahindra, Mphasis and Tata Consultancy Services fell roughly 4-6%. The Nifty IT index tanked a staggering 6% on Tuesday. COBOL remains an important technology for many Indian IT firms, particularly those supporting global banking, insurance and retail infrastructure. TCS is among the largest employers for mainframe and COBOL-related roles in India, largely for international banking clients. Infosys also hires mainframe developers and system programmers for COBOL-based systems, while Wipro uses the language across several consulting and IT services engagements. Coforge similarly focuses on COBOL in parts of its specialised services portfolio. In a blog post on Monday, Anthropic said modernising COBOL systems traditionally required large teams of consultants spending years mapping workflows. "Tools like Claude Code can automate the exploration and analysis phases that consume most of the effort in COBOL modernization," the company said, adding that with AI, teams could modernise COBOL codebases in quarters rather than years. Anthropic claimed that AI excels at streamlining tasks that once made COBOL modernisation cost-prohibitive. "With it, your team can focus on strategy, risk assessment, and business logic while AI automates the code analysis and implementation," it said. The company claimed that the approach taken by AI can work for COBOL systems of any size. "Tools like Claude Code can automate much of the exploration and analysis work described, giving your team the comprehensive understanding they need to plan and execute migrations confidently," it said. Further, fresh concerns have also surfaced about AI's potential to reshape the cybersecurity industry. Tuesday's sharp decline in cybersecurity stocks reflected those fears, as investors assessed the possible impact of a new security tool launched by Anthropic. In today's session, several cybersecurity and technology stocks came under sharp selling pressure, with some falling as much as 20%. TAC Infosec was among the worst hit, hitting a 20% lower circuit at Rs 415.70 on the NSE. TechD Cybersecurity dropped more than 14%, while Sattrix Information Security declined 5%. Exato Technologies slipped 3%. Among other stocks, Sasken Technologies fell up to 3.2% to its day's low of Rs 1,155 per share on the BSE Limited. Quick Heal Technologies declined more than 3%, while Expleo Solutions dropped nearly 5% to its intraday low of Rs 791 per share. IBM shares sink 13%, record steepest drop in 25 years after Anthropic says AI can modernise COBOL (Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times) (You can now subscribe to our ETMarkets WhatsApp channel)