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Anthropic, the five-year-old AI juggernaut now sitting at a staggering $380 billion valuation after a $30 billion funding round, has blown past the combined market cap of India’s top IT players—TCS, Infosys, Wipro, and HCLTech—which together hover around $250 billion. This leap comes right as old-school tech stocks are taking a beating. IBM, for example, tumbled 12.19% on February 23, 2026, dropping from $254.37 to $223.35. Investors are worried about what AI means for these legacy firms. So, here’s the question Anthropic throws at the industry: is this the start of a golden age for innovation, or does it spell doom for the old guard?
Anthropic’s Rocket-Fueled Growth
Anthropic launched in 2021, started by Dario and Daniela Amodei after their stint at OpenAI. They talked a lot about AI safety at first, but wasted no time turning the company into a commercial heavyweight. Their Claude models are everywhere now—running agentic AI tools like Claude Code and Claude Cowork, which handle coding, debugging, and even drag ancient systems into the modern era. Stuff that used to take teams of engineers.
Today, these tools generate about 4% of all public GitHub commits worldwide. That’s helped Anthropic hit a $14 billion annual revenue run-rate, with Fortune 500 companies jumping on board to cut costs. Backers include Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The result? A $380 billion valuation by February 2026, leaving legacy firms in the dust.
Shaking Up the Old IT Giants
For years, Indian IT companies and IBM made their money by hiring huge teams to handle coding, testing, and maintenance for clients around the world. Anthropic’s AI turns that model on its head. Now, a single AI agent can do what used to take floors full of junior engineers. Costs plummet.
The fallout’s been brutal. Indian IT stocks have crashed over 20% in just a month, wiping out $50 billion in value. Nifty IT is at a 30-month low, thanks to fresh AI threat reports. IBM took a big hit too, after Anthropic rolled out COBOL analysis tools that update legacy code faster and cheaper than any consultant. People are calling this the “SaaSpocalypse”—because when AI can securely handle proprietary data, traditional SaaS and IT services suddenly look shaky.
A Boon: Supercharging Innovation
Still, Anthropic’s rise isn’t just a death knell—it’s a wake-up call. Legacy firms have to stop tweaking the old ways and start doing something new. With tools like Claude, companies can get products out faster and even build new revenue streams from AI-powered services.
What’s wild is that smaller players can now access world-class coding tools without hiring massive teams. That boosts productivity everywhere. Investors are on board too: they’re moving money toward true AI disruptors and away from companies stuck in the past.
| Company/Group | Market Cap/Valuation | Recent Change | Key AI Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | $380B (post-Series G) | +$30B funding | Agentic AI automates dev ops tradingeconomics+1 |
| TCS + Infosys + Wipro + HCL | ~$250B combined | -20% Nifty IT | Contract cancellations feared bloomberg+1 |
| IBM | ~$200B (implied) | -12% (Feb 23) | COBOL modernization threat twelvedata+1 |
A Curse: The Threat to Old-School Operations
But let’s not sugarcoat it—it’s rough for the old guard. Indian IT firms are losing contracts as clients bring AI in-house. IBM and others are watching their bread-and-butter modernization projects dry up, since AI can now do in a few months what teams of humans needed years for.
Millions of jobs in routine coding and testing are on the line. Unless there’s a serious push for retraining, the gap between winners and losers will only get wider. The market’s already spooked: Nifty IT is way down, and U.S. software stocks are sliding too.
How Legacy Firms Can Survive
Still, it’s not game over for the old players—if they move fast. IBM’s betting on Watsonx. Indian firms are testing out AI partnerships. The sweet spot could be hybrid models: AI tools plus human experts who bring deep domain knowledge.
Anthropic’s rise makes one thing clear—companies need to innovate or risk fading away. Governments should step in with training programs, while businesses need to rethink how their teams and workflows can work alongside AI.
Looking Ahead
Anthropic is the perfect example of AI’s double-edged sword: it’s a huge win for progress, but a real threat for anyone stuck in the old ways. With Anthropic now 40% bigger than India’s Big Four combined, the pressure’s on legacy companies to embrace agentic AI fast. Today’s stock drops—like IBM’s—are a warning. But with smart moves, what looks like a threat right now could actually open the door to a new era of opportunity.
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