Why Anthropic is behind IBM stock's 13% plummet

Core Viewpoint - International Business Machines (IBM) is experiencing significant stock pressure, with February potentially being its worst month in over 50 years, primarily due to competition from AI advancements by Anthropic [1][2]. Group 1: Stock Performance - IBM's stock dropped 13.15% following Anthropic's announcement, marking the company's worst trading day in the 21st century with a closing price of $224.50 [1][2]. - The stock's decline is attributed to concerns over the company's reliance on COBOL, a programming language that is becoming increasingly obsolete due to a shortage of developers [3][4]. Group 2: COBOL and Developer Bottleneck - COBOL is critical for IBM's operations, facilitating large-scale transactions across various sectors, yet the number of developers proficient in it is diminishing as new programmers favor languages like Python and Java [4][5]. - Reports indicate that hundreds of billions of lines of COBOL code are in use daily, but the institutional knowledge is fading as the original developers retire [5][7]. Group 3: AI's Role in Modernization - Anthropic claims its AI technology can modernize COBOL infrastructure, potentially allowing teams to update their codebases in quarters instead of years, which poses a threat to IBM's traditional business model [8][9]. - Despite the potential benefits of AI in modernization, IBM's long-term business outlook remains under pressure due to these technological advancements [8].