Is artificial intelligence devouring the tech industry from the inside out? The discreet launch of a tool by Anthropic was enough to cause billions of dollars in losses on the stock market. And maybe this is just the beginning.
In brief
- Anthropic launched Claude Code Security on February 20, an AI-powered vulnerability scanner.
- CrowdStrike shares plunged 18%, wiping out $20 billion in capitalization.
- Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Cloudflare and Zscaler all fell 9% or more.
- IBM recorded its biggest daily drop since 2000, at -13.2%, after Anthropic's statements on COBOL modernization.
When AI tackles cybersecurity
On February 20, 2025, Anthropic rolled out in preview Claude Code Security, a code analysis tool based on its flagship Claude Opus 4.6 model.
The promise is straightforward: scan an entire code base, identify vulnerabilities, validate each result to limit false positives, then propose fixes. All “like a seasoned security researcher”, in the company’s own words.
The initial results are striking. Claude Opus 4.6 has already reportedly detected more than 500 high-severity vulnerabilities that had withstood decades of human auditing, according to VentureBeat. OpenAI also crowned it the best model on its benchmark dedicated to smart contract security, launched on February 19.
The markets reacted brutally. CrowdStrike lost 18% in a few daysor 20 billion dollars gone. Palo Alto Networks, a giant of the sector with 116 billion capitalization, fell 9%. Fortinet, Cloudflare and Zscaler followed the same path. In one week, the entire listed cybersecurity sector found itself under pressure.
For Shrenik Kothari, analyst at Robert W. Baird, it is “a massive sell-off fueled by panic and a dominant narrative.” But other voices qualify this reading.
An earthquake that goes beyond cybersecurity
There Letter from Kobeissi put it bluntly in an analysis published Tuesday: “ When AI replicates the work of employees, pricing power shifts to the buyer. » A short sentence, but which summarizes the fundamental issue of this disruption.
Because the shock wave did not stop at cybersecurity. IBM suffered its biggest daily fall on Monday since October 18, 2000, with a decline of 13.2%.
The reason? Anthropic published a blog post explaining that Claude Code can automate the modernization of COBOL, the old programming language that still runs banking, insurance and government systems on IBM mainframes. Where armies of consultants spent years, AI promises to reduce the work to a few quarters.
Wedbush analysts speak of “fears of phantom transactions linked to AI”, but paradoxically recognize that Anthropic reinforces the idea that cybersecurity will be one of the big beneficiaries of the rise of AI, no longer as an external service provider, but integrated directly into development tools.
What this sequence reveals is less a passing crisis than a structural readjustment. AI no longer only competes with humans, it now attacks software itself. For investors and tech companies alike, the question is no longer whether AI will redistribute the cards, but how quickly.
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