Los ejecutivos de IBM afirman que el mercado se ha confundido en cuanto al enfoque

“Code conversion is one thing, platform modernization is a completely different matter.” After three days of the worst single-day decline in IBM’s stock price in 25 years, the company’s Senior Vice President, Software Head, and Chief Commercial Officer Rob Thomas responded to recent discussions around AI and COBOL. He attempted to clarify a key concept for investors: AI can convert COBOL language, but that does not mean it can replace the core value of IBM’s mainframe business. The trigger for this wave of concern came from the AI newcomer Anthropic. On February 23, local time, Anthropic announced that its tool Claude Code could modernize the ancient programming language COBOL, promising to complete the process “within several quarters rather than several years.” Once the news broke, market panic quickly spread—investors worried that if AI could easily modernize legacy code, IBM’s mainframe business, which it relies on for survival, would lose its reason for existence. That day, IBM’s stock price plummeted 13% in a single day, marking the worst single-day decline since October 2000. This plunge further dragged down the entire software sector, with market concerns about AI disrupting traditional software business models erupting collectively. (First Financial)