4 min readMumbaiUpdated: Feb 4, 2026 01:52 PM IST
Global technology markets were rattled on Tuesday as a wave of anxiety followed the announcement of a major breakthrough by US artificial intelligence company Anthropic. The development reignited concerns that AI capabilities are advancing faster than many companies and investors can comfortably absorb. The impact was felt sharply in India, where shares of Infosys plunged nearly 8 percent and TCS dropped 6.46 percent in Wednesday’s session. HCL Technologies was down by 5.76 per cent on the BSE.
Unlisted Anthropic, widely known for its Claude AI model, introduced a new system designed to autonomously handle complex, multi-step professional work that previously required dedicated software tools or teams of junior staff. Moving beyond traditional chatbots that simply answer questions, the system can design a plan, carry it out and validate results on its own, as revealed by the company.
It is capable of processing large volumes of documents, interpreting and cross-verifying information, producing structured outputs and adjusting its strategy as tasks evolve, according to reports.
According to Devarsh Vakil, Head of Prime Research, HDFC Securities, the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 1.4 per cent as software stocks extended losses and Anthropic’s launch of workplace productivity tools intensified worries, with the sector shedding approximately $300 billion in market value.
On Wall Street, tech firm Adobe lost 7.31 per cent, Cognizant by 10.14 per cent, Thomson Reuters by 15.67 per cent, Gartner 20.87 per cent and Equifax 12.11 per cent. Markets were shaken by the shift from AI that answers questions to AI that performs the work itself, US analysts say.
“We believe AI will have a vast impact on the world. Anthropic is dedicated to building systems that people can rely on and generating research about the opportunities and risks of AI,” Anthropic says. The AI firm was founded in 2021 by a group of former OpenAI researchers, led by Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei.
Investors’ panick
A major section of the software industry thrived on selling narrowly focused tools: legal research platforms, compliance software, data-analysis dashboards, customer-relationship tools and workflow managers. Anthropic’s latest release suggests that a single AI system may now replicate many of these functions inside one interface.
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According to US-based analysts, investors are understandbly worried about the potential disruption. If companies can rely on one AI assistant to review contracts, flag risks, generate reports and summarise data, investors wonder why clients should continue paying for multiple high-priced software subscriptions. The result was a sharp sell-off in software and tech-enabled professional services stocks, as markets reassessed future revenues in a world where AI could compress entire software categories into a single layer. ADRs of Infosys plummeted by 5.56 per cent on Nasdaq.
Traditional software businesses are built on recurring subscriptions, steady upgrades and high margins. AI systems like Anthropic’s threaten to turn software into a utility, where value shifts away from individual tools and towards whoever controls the most capable underlying intelligence.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said, “some have suggested that we are somehow interested in harming the startup ecosystem. Startups are among our most important customers. We work with tens of thousands of startups and partner with hundreds of accelerators and VCs. Claude is powering an entirely new generation of AI-native companies. Damaging that ecosystem makes no sense for us.”
Reports also suggest that there is also concern for industries that bill by the hour. Legal research, compliance checks, due diligence and financial analysis, considered once the bread and butter of junior techies, are precisely the tasks this new generation of AI excels at. If those hours disappear, entire business models may need re-engineering.