AI narrative welcomes watershed: Anthropic replaces "disruption" with "cooperation," and the software stocks finally breathed a sigh of relief.

After the artificial intelligence (AI) startup company Anthropic announced partnerships with a series of enterprises, investors on Tuesday began to look for bottom signals of software company stocks that had suffered major losses. Previously, due to market concerns including disruption of their business models by AI technology, software stocks had been severely hit in recent weeks. On Tuesday, Anthropic announced in its corporate intelligence event the launch of a major update for its productivity tool "Claude Cowork." This release marks the product's transition from research-oriented to enterprise-level, introducing 10 new AI plug-in tools at once, expanding the reach of AI into multiple vertical scenarios including investment banking, wealth management, Human Resources (HR), private equity (PE), and engineering design. These updates allow enterprises to integrate them into many enterprise applications including Salesforce, Inc. (CRM.US)'s Slack, Intuit Inc. (INTU.US), DocuSign (DOCU.US), LegalZoom (LZ.US), FactSet Research Systems Inc. (FDS.US), and Alphabet Inc. Class C (GOOGL.US)'s Gmail. Scott White, the product manager of Anthropic's corporate products, stated that Claude's goal is to bring better results to customers, not to replace them. He said, "This is not a product trying to control every workflow. What we offer is infrastructure and intelligence so that partners and customers can integrate their business knowledge, professional experience, trust relationships, and customer resources into it." This news immediately sparked positive responses in the market, with several partner stocks rising. Thomson Reuters Corporation (TRI.US) had particularly outstanding performance, soaring 14% at one point, marking its largest intraday increase in over two decades. The company showcased its AI assistant CoCounsel platform for lawyers at the Anthropic event, revealing that the tool's users had surpassed one million. Thomson Reuters Corporation stated that it is developing AI products that combine Anthropic, OpenAI, and Alphabet Inc. Class C's Gemini models. FactSet's stock rose by around 6%, Salesforce, Inc. rose by 4%, DocuSign and LegalZoom both rose by nearly 3%. The S&P 500 software and services sector index rose by 1.3% on that day. Despite being down 23% year-to-date, this rebound brought a slight warmth to the market. The iShares ETF focused on the technology software industry, IGV, also closed higher by 1.9%. Market sentiment shift: from "disruption fears" to "application prospects" The rebound on Tuesday comes after the software sector recently experienced historic sell-offs. Earlier, the news of Anthropic's launch of the Claude Cowork proxy tool led to severe sell-offs in various stocks. This Monday, IGV hit a 10-month low, as Citrini Research painted a scenario of unemployment rising to 10.2% by 2028, assuming a rapid replacement of software and delivery applications by AI, leading to widespread layoffs. However, this rebound may signal a change in the narrative of market perceptions of AI threats. Analysts at Wedbush Securities pointed out in a research report on Tuesday that the competitive risks of AI to the software industry were "exaggerated." They believe that AI models currently cannot replace complete workflows deeply embedded in existing software infrastructure. "The reality is, these new AI tools will not completely replace the existing software ecosystem and data environment, their utility depends entirely on the data they can access." In response to the market's recent sharp reactions to its products, Anthropic's White remarked that tying market performance directly to a single product launch was "somewhat of an overinterpretation or overreaction," emphasizing that the company's AI models are helping enterprise customers achieve growth, rather than simply replacing existing businesses. Eric Kuby, Chief Investment Officer at North Star Investment Management Corp., also stated, "We view the enterprises' collaboration with Anthropic positively, which may signify a new chapter in discussions. The conversation may shift from 'disruption' to 'what are the application use cases' and 'how does this benefit your business.'" His company holds stocks of LegalZoom, which collaborates with Anthropic. Although market sentiment has improved, recent sharp fluctuations indicate that risks still exist. Just this Monday, Anthropic mentioned that its Claude Code tool could be used to upgrade programming languages running on IBM (IBM.US) systems, leading to the largest single-day decline in stock price for this veteran technology company in over 25 years. However, IBM's stock rebounded by over 2% on Tuesday. A week-long sell-off earlier this month had wiped out approximately $1 trillion in market value on Wall Street, which some analysts dubbed as the "software industry's doomsday," impacting industries ranging from software to logistics across the Atlantic to China Welding Consumables, Inc. and India. A Mizuho analyst pointed out that there was a clear "panic sentiment" in the market before the Anthropic event, causing investors to choose to "sell first, ask questions later" rather than getting trapped in another cycle of headline-driven declines. Analysts at JPMorgan also stated, "It remains extremely challenging to disprove a negative proposition (demonstrating that these companies will not be disrupted), which supports the current market environment." However, Dennis Dick, Chief Market Strategist at Stock Trader Network, believes that software stocks, especially IGV, are already "severely oversold." "Any incremental news about more disruption needs to consider how much expectation is already factored into the price. Some disruptions are not imminent, many may happen a few years down the road. The market is telling us this right now."