Last fall, OpenAI sent shockwaves through the software industry. Now Anthropic is doing the same.
A new wave of announcements from Anthropic this week revived fears that generative AI could undermine the economics of traditional software companies.
In a research note published Wednesday, RBC Capital Markets analysts said a flurry of recent product launches from Anthropic, including new AI tools for productivity and healthcare, have coincided with a broad sell-off in the software sector and could heighten concerns that AI is becoming a competitive threat rather than a tailwind.
On Sunday, Anthropic introduced Claude for Healthcare & Life Sciences, which includes HIPAA-ready enterprise tools. The next day it unveiled Claude Cowork, an AI agent that handles document generation and file management. And then on Tuesday it announced the expansion of Labs, an internal incubator team that tests and showcases experimental AI products.
Shares of Salesforce, Workday, Intuit, and Snowflake fell sharply after this barrage of news, losing between 6% and 13%. That suggests investors are beginning to reassess whether software companies can defend their pricing power as AI capabilities expand, RBC noted.
“While the overall risk is not new (we saw announcements from OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. causing significant stock price swings in 2025), we believe the pace of innovation and announcements from the model providers could continue to weigh on the broader software landscape in 2026,” RBC analysts wrote.
No longer ‘AI-proof’
For years, SaaS companies have justified recurring subscription fees by packaging productivity features, analytics, automation, and domain expertise into proprietary tools. But AI threatens to flatten that value proposition by turning many of these functions into on-demand capabilities accessible through a single interface.
The fear is not new. Last year, OpenAI caused a similar sell-off after demonstrating a suite of internal workplace tools built on top of its models. An April report from AlixPartners found that around 100 software companies were “under pressure” from AI-driven competition.
Perhaps most concerning for investors is that the reach of AI now appears to be expanding into vertical software, an area long considered relatively isolated due to regulatory complexity and domain expertise.
RBC analysts say Anthropic’s healthcare-focused tools suggest this assumption may no longer hold. By integrating directly with industry databases such as PubMed and ClinicalTrials.gov, and offering specialized agent skills tailored to medical workflows, AI providers are beginning to penetrate niches traditionally served by specialty vendors.
“We have viewed vertical software as a piece of software that will likely be considered ‘AI-proof’ (for now) given the deep domain, regulatory nuance, and workflow expertise required to be successful,” RBC’s note said. “That said, the recently announced Claude for Healthcare & Life Sciences suggests that the AI contagion could spread to a number of vertical names, and these could prove to be less defensive (at least from a multi-pronged perspective) than initially thought.”
The analysts warned that the AI overhang on software “could persist” and “spread” as Anthropic, OpenAI and Google accelerate their announcements.
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