A newly unveiled AI product from Anthropic has sent shockwaves through global markets, triggering an estimated $285 billion selloff across technology, outsourcing, and knowledge-work-heavy sectors.
The tool emphasizes autonomous reasoning, contextual memory, and reduced human oversight—capabilities that investors interpret as directly substitutable for high-cost professional labor. Unlike earlier generative models, this release crossed a psychological threshold: AI not just assisting work, but owning it.
Publicly traded firms tied to consulting, IT services, and back-office operations bore the brunt of the rout. Even companies actively investing in AI were punished as investors questioned whether adoption would happen fast enough to offset margin pressure.
For the first time in the generative AI era, innovation triggered fear rather than enthusiasm. Markets began pricing in second-order effects—accelerated labor displacement, pricing deflation, and compressed enterprise value chains.
Anthropic’s announcement has reinforced a new reality: major AI releases are no longer niche tech events. They are macroeconomic catalysts capable of reshaping entire sectors overnight.
