All articles tagged with #cobol
IBM shares fell 13.2%, the steepest one-day drop since October 18, 2000, after Anthropic said its Claude Code AI could automate COBOL modernization on IBM mainframes, fueling a broader sell-off in software stocks.
IBM shares fell about 13% in a session—the steepest one‑day drop since 2000—after Anthropic suggested AI could modernize COBOL, fueling concerns about IBM’s reliance on legacy technology and its growth prospects.
IBM shares slid roughly 10% after Anthropic unveiled Claude Code, an AI tool to automate COBOL modernization, with Accenture and Cognizant retreating on the news; Claude Code maps dependencies, documents workflows, and identifies risks to speed modernization of legacy COBOL systems that still power ATM networks and other critical infrastructure. Anthropic released a Code Modernization Playbook alongside the launch.
IBM stock fell about 13% after Anthropic said Claude Code could automate COBOL modernization, threatening IBM’s legacy mainframe business since COBOL underpins many critical systems (including the majority of U.S. ATM transactions); the AI disruption adds to market jitters and IBM has slumped more than 24% year-to-date.
IBM is developing the watsonx Code Assistant, an AI tool aimed at refactoring ancient COBOL code for its mainframe systems. The tool will analyze, refactor, and test the code, with humans still involved in the process. IBM hopes that the generative AI will help decouple individual services from monolithic COBOL apps, making the code more modular. The company plans to offer the tool in three steps: refactoring, transforming the code into mainframe-friendly Java or COBOL, and validation with AI-generated test cases. While AI assistance could help modernize COBOL code, concerns remain about the loss of institutional memory and the potential for AI-generated code to introduce errors.