Explainer: How Claude Code threatens to disrupt IBM’s mainframe biz

Anthropic’s announcement that its updated AI tool can modernise COBOL, an old programming language that runs on IBM’s mainframes, left Big Blue’s stocks battered on Monday. Banasree Purkayastha looks at how the AI startup’s tool aims to automate the legacy system which is scaring the enterprise software and IT services industry

l What did Anthropic say?

IN A BLOG post on February 23, AI startup Anthropic declared that the economics of modernising COBOL, a dated programming language that runs on IBM mainframes, have shifted with the advent of AI tools like its own Claude Code. “Modernising a COBOL system once required armies of consultants spending years mapping workflows.