Investing.com -- IBM (NYSE:IBM) shares hit a session low Monday afternoon, falling 10%, after Anthropic announced an AI tool designed to streamline COBOL code modernization. Accenture (NYSE:ACN) and Cognizant Technology Solutions (NASDAQ:CTSH) also declined following the news.
The three technology consulting firms were already trading lower amid broader weakness in the tech sector when Anthropic’s announcement hit. IBM, Accenture, and Cognizant have significant legacy system modernization practices that generate revenue from helping organizations update decades-old COBOL systems.
Anthropic’s new tool, Claude Code, automates the exploration and analysis phases of COBOL modernization that traditionally required large consulting teams. The AI tool can map dependencies across thousands of lines of code, document workflows, and identify risks that would typically take human analysts months to surface, according to the company.
COBOL remains widely used, handling an estimated 95% of ATM transactions in the United States. Hundreds of billions of lines of COBOL code run in production daily, powering critical systems in finance, airlines, and government sectors. However, the number of developers who understand the programming language continues to shrink as the workforce that built these systems has largely retired.
Anthropic stated that Claude Code can help teams modernize COBOL codebases in quarters instead of years by automating code analysis and implementation tasks. The tool identifies program entry points, traces execution paths, maps data flows between modules, and documents dependencies across hundreds of files.
The company said legacy code modernization previously stalled because understanding legacy code cost more than rewriting it, but AI changes that equation. Anthropic released a Code Modernization Playbook alongside the tool announcement on February 23, 2026.
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