US software stocks climb as Anthropic announcement sparks relief rally

Intapp

24/02/2026 16:44

Feb 24 (Reuters) - Shares of U.S. software companies
that entered into partnerships with AI startup Anthropic on
Tuesday helped lead a rebound in the sector that has been
hammered by fears about the disruptive impact of artificial
intelligence.
    Anthropic said it was developing new tools, the so-called
"plug-ins", with its partners that could help with investment
banking, wealth management and HR tasks, including deal reviews,
portfolio analysis and making new-hire materials reflect a
brand's tone and policies.
    Shares of its partners, including LSEG  LSEG.L , FactSet
 FDS.N , Salesforce's  CRM.O  Slack, and DocuSign  DOCU.O ,
climbed between 0.4% and 5.3%. 
    The S&P 500 software & services index  .SPLRCIS  also rose
1.4% and the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF  IGV.Z 
jumped 2.4%.
    The software index touched a 10-month low on Monday after
Citrini Research laid out a 2028 scenario where unemployment
rises to 10.2%, triggered by layoffs as AI rapidly turfs out
software and delivery applications.
    "Software stocks and the IGV particularly are just massively
oversold. So any incremental news that we're getting about more
disruptions is like getting to a point where how much is priced
in already," said Dennis Dick, chief market strategist at Stock
Trader Network.
    "Some of this disruption is not imminent and a lot of this
is probably years out yet. The market's telling us that now."
    A week-long selloff earlier this month wiped out about $1
trillion in market value on Wall Street that analysts dubbed
'Software-mageddon' and hurt sectors spanning from software to
logistics companies on both sides of the Atlantic and India.
    Anthropic said on Monday its Claude Code tool could be used
to modernize a programming language run on IBM systems,
resulting in the biggest daily drop in shares of the legacy
company  IBM.N  in more than 25 years. IBM shares were up 3.5%
on Tuesday.  
    Tax-preparation software Intuit  INTU.O  gained 2.8% and
AI-solutions provider Intapp  INTA.O  climbed 7.1% after the
companies announced separate partnerships with Anthropic on
Tuesday.

 (Reporting by Johann M Cherian, Sruthi Shankar and Purvi
Agarwal in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)
 ((johann.mcherian@thomsonreuters.com;))