IBM’s stock fell by 13% on Monday, losing about $31 billion in market value ($208.7 billion from $240.8 billion), in its biggest drop since 2000, during the “dot.com” bubble period. IBM is one of the oldest and most important technology companies in the world (it was founded in 1911). It has been a pioneer in the creation of software and computers.
The drop came after the announcement of a new AI tool by Anthropic that can modernize the COBOL programming language used by IBM systems, something that can reduce the need for the company’s “traditional” services.
The COBOL programming language was designed in the ’60s and is still used in systems such as ATMs (95%) in the U.S.
The COBOL programming language was designed in the 1960s and is still used in critical systems in the U.S., such as, for example, in 95% of ATM transactions, in payments through Social Security, airlines, etc. IBM helped make the COBOL programming language widely known and still provides systems that use it.
But Anthropic says that COBOL is now taught in very few universities and that it is becoming more and more difficult to find programmers who can read it and maintain it. For this reason, it argues that artificial intelligence can quickly help modernize this old code.
Analysts say the market may be overreacting, as there is not yet any indication of a real decline in revenue, but mainly fear around AI.
Sources: Forbes, Reuters
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