IBM stock price plunges 13%, wiping out $31 billion in market value, Claude's impact on COBOL business sparks AI replacement concerns
On February 25, IBM's stock price plummeted approximately 13% in a single day, wiping out nearly $31 billion in market value and prompting Wall Street to reevaluate its core business model. The immediate trigger for this sell-off was the technological breakthrough announced by Anthropic, whose Claude model is said to be capable of reading and modernizing traditional COBOL code. This capability directly threatens IBM's long-standing reliance on mainframe maintenance and enterprise consulting markets.
For years, IBM's moat in the enterprise infrastructure sector has been primarily built on deep services related to mainframe systems and the COBOL language. Banks, insurance companies, and government databases still run a large amount of legacy code, making system maintenance, upgrades, and migrations a stable long-term revenue source. However, as AI code migration tools become increasingly mature, the market is beginning to worry that "AI automation of traditional system modernization" will shorten high-cost consulting project cycles and reduce dependence on traditional service providers.