IBM Shares Plunge 13% Amid AI Threat To Legacy Mainframe Business
Published on: Feb. 24, 2026, 3:36 p.m. | Source: Free Press Journal
IBM shares tumbled 13.2%, marking their biggest single-day drop since 2000, after AI startup Anthropic claimed its tool can modernize COBOL, the decades-old language powering many IBM mainframes. Investors fear AI could disrupt IBM’s steady revenue from legacy system maintenance, as AI makes updating old code faster, cheaper, and less reliant on human experts.
