Shares of IBM (NYSE:IBM) shored lower Monday afternoon, hitting a session low near a 10% decline after Anthropic announced a new AI-driven product designed to accelerate modernization of COBOL codebases. Accenture (NYSE:ACN) and Cognizant Technology Solutions (NASDAQ:CTSH) also slipped on the news.
The three consulting-technology companies were already trading under pressure alongside a broader pullback in the technology sector when Anthropic publicly detailed the new tool. IBM, Accenture, and Cognizant each maintain substantial legacy-system modernization practices that generate revenue by helping clients update COBOL systems that have been in place for decades.
Anthropic named the offering Claude Code and framed it as an automation solution for the exploration and analysis stages of COBOL modernization. According to the company, Claude Code can map dependencies across thousands of lines of code, produce documentation of workflows, and surface risks that would normally require large teams of human analysts and months of manual work.
COBOL still underpins a large share of critical infrastructure - Anthropic highlighted that the language handles an estimated 95% of ATM transactions in the United States - and hundreds of billions of lines of COBOL run in production every day across finance, airlines, and government systems. At the same time, the pool of developers experienced with COBOL has been shrinking as the cohort that originally built and maintained those systems has largely retired.
Anthropic said Claude Code automates tasks such as identifying program entry points, tracing execution paths, mapping data flows between modules, and documenting dependencies across hundreds of files. The company asserted these capabilities can enable codebase modernization to proceed in quarters rather than years by reducing the manual burden of code analysis and implementation work.
In tandem with the product announcement, Anthropic released a Code Modernization Playbook on February 23, 2026. The company argued that, prior to recent advances in AI, legacy modernization often stalled because the cost of understanding existing code exceeded the cost of rewriting it, and that AI shifts that cost equation.
Market reaction to the announcement coincided with existing weakness in the sector, and investors moved to reprice firms exposed to legacy modernization revenue streams. IBM, Accenture, and Cognizant all registered declines following the disclosure of Claude Code.
Key points
- Anthropic released Claude Code, an AI tool that automates analysis and documentation tasks in COBOL modernization.
- IBM, Accenture, and Cognizant - firms with sizable legacy-system consulting practices - saw share prices fall after the announcement.
- COBOL remains widely used in critical systems, including an estimated 95% of U.S. ATM transactions, while experienced COBOL developers are diminishing.
Risks and uncertainties
- Revenue exposure - consulting firms that generate fees from manual COBOL modernization could face disruption as automation reduces labor requirements.
- Workforce limitations - the declining number of developers familiar with COBOL may affect the pace and method of modernization efforts.
- Market sensitivity - the announcement occurred amid broader tech sector weakness, making it difficult to isolate the announcement's standalone market impact.