Photo: EPA / SARAH YENESEL

On Tuesday, February 3, a new AI automation tool from Anthropic provoked a drop in the market capitalization of companies totaling $285 billion. Firms operating in the software, financial and legal information services, and asset management sectors were affected by the sale, writes Bloomberg.

This panic was caused by the release of a legal tool from Anthropic that automates what large software and data companies are currently paid to do: analyze contracts and prepare legal briefs.

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It's not the only tool on the market that automates routine work for lawyers, but specialized startups like Legora and Harvey AI depend on developers of basic AI models, while Anthropic is a developer itself, which gives it a unique advantage over its competitors.

Another Anthropic release, the Claude Cowork tool, increased investor anxiety about the software sector's vulnerability to AI risks back in January, and last week, gaming stocks were hit after Alphabet began rolling out Project Genie, a tool capable of creating 3D worlds based on text or visual queries.

Together, this has led to the fact that the S&P North American Software Index began to fall at a pace not seen since the global financial crisis of 2008.

"We call it the SaaSpocalypse – the apocalypse for software-as-a-service stocks," Bloomberg quoted one of the traders at Jefferies Investment Bank as saying.

  • Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei a year ago predictedthat artificial intelligence could take over coding as early as 2026.