Shares of Indian IT giants Infosys and Wipro, listed on America’s Wall Street, fell over 5% on Tuesday. Multinational companies based outside the United States use the tool called the American Depository Receipt (ADR) to trade on US stock markets.
And so, the Indian IT companies weren’t the only ones to witness the downward spiral, as Accenture and Cognizant stocks fell up to 10% overnight, as per multiple reports. Moreover, Thomson Reuters Corp., Legalzoom.com Inc. and FactSet Research Systems Inc. were also down around 10% or more on Tuesday.
AI startup Anthropic’s move sparks US stocks spiral
The sudden slump was reportedly fuelled by startup Anthropic’s launch of a new AI automation tool. As per multiple mainstream reports, analysts are already branding the development as a “SaaSapocalypse,” owing to the impact triggered by the release of the productivity tool for in-house lawyers.
Jefferies called the emerging trend a ‘SaaSapocalypse,’ marking the shift going “from ‘AI helps these companies’ to ‘AI replaces these companies.'” The drastic shift points towards Claude agent’s ability to integrate directly with internal systems, prompting a reduced dependence on traditional SaaS platforms used for customer management and workflow automation.
Anthropic’s new tool launch comes as general sentiment surrounding software stocks and their business models has already been apprehensive due to the surge of artificial intelligence. Jefferies called the trading activity around the stocks a “get me out” style.
What is the new Anthropic AI tool?
The AI juggernaut’s recent move hammering legal-software stocks involved roll-out of 11 new plugins for its Claude Cowork AI Agent, which can perform several clerical tasks, including reviewing legal documents.
With the ‘Anthropic Effect’ taking over, the new plugins will position Claude Cowork Agent as a no-code, agentic AI assistant with the ability to handle multi-faceted tasks without much human intervention.
Software and publishing stocks linked to the legal industry were particularly hit as the tool automated tasks across legal, marketing, data analysis and sales functions. According to Bloomberg, the sell-off in US stocks happened even before US markets opened, as investor reactions to Anthropic’s expanded Cowork capabilities hit the Internet.
The Claude Legal agent aims to tackle routine legal work, including compliance checks and drafting legal briefs. Additionally, Claude agents can also deal with tasks that originally needed interfaces from platforms like Salesforce or ServiceNow.