IBM stock falls 13.1% after Anthropic posts how Claude Code can be used to modernize COBOL

IBM shares dropped sharply by 13.1% to $223.39 when the market closed on Monday, making it the company’s biggest one-day fall since October 2000, when the stock had fallen about 15.5%.

The news was first highlighted in a post on X by The Kobeissi Letter, which said this shows how important and fast-changing the current tech era is. After this announcement, shares of Accenture and Cognizant Technology Solutions also went down. These companies were already trading lower because the overall tech sector was weak that day.

IBM stock price falls after AI news

IBM, Accenture, and Cognizant earn a lot of money by helping businesses update very old computer systems written in COBOL, as per the report by Investing.com. Anthropic recently published a blog post explaining how its Claude Code system can be used to automate the early stages of updating COBOL systems, work that normally needs big consulting teams. The AI can quickly scan thousands of lines of old code, map how they connect, explain workflows, and find risks.


This type of work usually takes human experts many months to complete. COBOL is still very important today — it handles about 95% of ATM transactions in the United States. Hundreds of billions of lines of COBOL code still run daily in banks, airlines, and government systems. But the number of programmers who understand COBOL is falling because most original developers have retired.

AI tool makes work much faster

Anthropic said its Claude Code system can help modernize these systems in months instead of years. The tool can find program entry points, track how the code runs, map data movement, and document connections between files, as noted by Investing.com.

The company explained that in the past, modernization projects got stuck because understanding old code was more expensive than rewriting it. Anthropic said AI now changes this situation by making code analysis much faster and cheaper. Along with the blog post, the company released a “Code Modernization Playbook” on February 23, 2026.

FAQs

Q1. Why did IBM stock fall suddenly?

IBM stock fell after Anthropic announced a new AI tool that can quickly update old COBOL computer systems, which may reduce the need for consulting services.

Q2. What does Anthropic’s Claude Code system do?

It helps companies understand and update old COBOL code faster by automatically analyzing, mapping, and documenting how the system works.