New York, February 24, 2026, 08:51 EST — Premarket
- IBM shares ticked up in premarket action, clawing back a bit after dropping 13% on Monday.
- The selloff came after Anthropic highlighted quicker “COBOL modernization” through its Claude Code tools in a post.
- IBM’s upcoming March 3 conference appearance is drawing investor attention, with markets looking for any new commentary out of the company.
IBM stock edged up roughly 0.7% before the bell Tuesday, recouping a small part of the previous day’s steep 13% slide. Investors were rattled after concerns surfaced that fresh AI coding tech might threaten some business connected to IBM’s mainframe segment. (Public)
The sheer scale of the decline shook investors, striking at a core IBM narrative: large enterprises pay up to keep legacy systems alive and modernized, all without disrupting operations. But with AI threatening to shrink that kind of work, questions in the market turn to what ends up commoditised—services, software, or maybe even the platform itself.
The spark on Monday came from a blog post by AI player Anthropic, which said its Claude Code tools are capable of modernizing COBOL—a programming language dating back decades and still powering the guts of financial, insurance, and government systems. Anthropic noted, “Modernizing a COBOL system once required armies of consultants,” but now, the company claims, teams could finish those upgrades “in quarters instead of years.” (Claude)
When people talk about COBOL modernization, they’re typically referring to the painstaking work of translating and refactoring legacy code—getting old systems ready for updates, integration, or migration, all while keeping them running. Anthropic’s statement landed like a warning shot for firms profiting from this hands-on, expensive work tied to IBM mainframes. (Reuters)
It wasn’t just IBM feeling the pressure. Shares of Accenture and Cognizant dropped Monday as well, according to Investing.com, pointing to a broader market reaction—investors read the news as a blow to legacy-modernization projects across the sector, not just an IBM-specific setback. (Investing.com)
IBM wasn’t having it. On its newsroom site, Rob Thomas, who heads software, shot back: “Translating code is one thing. Modernizing a platform is something else entirely.” He pointed to the real challenge—the whole stack apps rely on and connect to, well beyond just the programming language. (IBM Newsroom)
IBM dropped new AI product updates early Tuesday, detailing a tie-up with Deepgram that brings speech-to-text and text-to-speech capabilities into its watsonx Orchestrate platform. “Voice is the default interface,” Deepgram CEO Scott Stephenson said. IBM’s Nick Holda pointed to the integration as a way to “refin[e] and moderniz[e]” how clients operate. (IBM Newsroom)
IBM slid to $223.35 at the close Monday, sinking by its steepest percentage since October 2000, Reuters reported. Shares hit a session low of $220.72, with nearly 19 million changing hands—far above the usual 4–5 million seen in recent sessions. (Reuters)
Next session, the focus turns to IBM and whether shares stay above Monday’s low. Traders are also eyeing broader weakness in consulting and software stocks tied to “keep-the-lights-on” modernization budgets. Any fresh detail from Anthropic—customer lists, deployment updates, limits—remains on the radar too.
Still, plenty of things could go wrong. Anthropic described what its tools are capable of, but offered no specifics on adoption rates, error margins, or the operational risks tied to revamping core systems. Those are usually the numbers that determine if a pilot moves to a full budget—or just disappears from view.
IBM’s next stops: the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference on March 3, then preliminary Q1 earnings on April 22. Investors will almost certainly push for details on where mainframe-adjacent services stand—and how the company is thinking about pricing for AI-driven code work. (IBM)
