IBM shares sink 13%, record steepest drop in 25 years after Anthropic says AI can modernise COBOL

IBM shares sank 13.2% to close at $223.35, marking their biggest single-day drop since October 18, 2000.What is COBOL?COBOL is a programming language widely used on IBM mainframes across banking, insurance and government systems. According to Anthropic, COBOL handles around 95% of ATM transactions in the US. However, it added that the number of people who understand the language keeps shrinking every year."Modernising a COBOL system once required armies of consultants spending ⁠years mapping ‌workflows. To ...