By Alexander Osipovich and Ben Dummett

For years it seemed like a surefire business model: Amass vast troves of financial data and sell it to Wall Street for a premium. Then Claude came along.

Shares of companies such as S&P Global, MSCI, Intercontinental Exchange, London Stock Exchange Group and FactSet Research Systems all tumbled this week after fast-growing artificial-intelligence startup Anthropic unveiled a new suite of tools for automating legal tasks.

The new legal plug-in for Anthropic's Cowork assistant, powered by its AI model Claude, didn't seem to have much to with financial data. Nonetheless, LSEG -- which has spent years pivoting away from its traditional stock-exchange business to selling data and analytics -- slid 13% on Tuesday, and its shares dropped further Wednesday morning.

S&P Global and FactSet were also hit with double-digit losses on Tuesday, while ICE and MSCI both fell more than 5%.

The losses highlighted the expanding threat of AI-driven disruption for financial services and the white-collar professionals who work in the sector.

In recent months, the sophistication of a new Claude-based tool for writing code rattled software engineers and raised concern about its impact on the broader tech industry. Anthropic's rollout of new legal tools added to similar fears for lawyers and hit the stock of companies that run legal-research databases, such as Thomson Reuters.

The selloff rippled out into a swath of other companies, as investors assessed which businesses are next in line for disruption by AI.

"The market has cast a very broad net as to which companies can be exposed to AI risk," said UBS analyst Michael Werner. "You don't have to be in the crosshairs of this particular AI risk. You can be in the periphery."

The rout has expanded to other corners of the software industry, such as outsourcing, where AI tools could reduce the need for human consultants. In India, shares of Infosys and Tata Consulting Services both fell around 7% on Wednesday.

The drop this week isn't completely out of the blue. Investors had been souring on the software sector since late last year, months before this week's action. The price of the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Exchange-Traded Fund peaked in September and had slumped by nearly one-quarter before Tuesday.

"Is software dead" is the biggest question that investors should be asking themselves about the fallout from AI, Apollo Asset Management co-president John Zito said at a conference last fall. Apollo has largely been avoiding the software sector for months.

Financial-data providers might seem like an unlikely target for AI-driven disruption, since many of the biggest ones derive their value from proprietary access to data and information feeds used by bankers and traders.

That had seemed like an impregnable advantage for S&P Global. Besides its well-known credit-ratings business, the New York-based company makes money by selling data products ranging from stock-market indexes to oil-price feeds to insurance-industry analytics.

Its share price soared more than fivefold in the decade ending in 2025, outpacing its own S&P 500 index, which roughly tripled over the same period. So far this year S&P Global is down around 10%, including Tuesday's losses.

Lucrative opportunities in data attracted exchange operators, which saw subscription-based services as a way to earn stable recurring revenues.

LSEG pursued a costly acquisition of Refinitiv Holdings in an effort to challenge data-terminal powerhouse Bloomberg. Intercontinental Exchange grew its data business in areas such as bonds, mortgages and even trading signals based on the chatter in Reddit forums.

Spokespeople for LSEG and ICE declined to comment. S&P Global, FactSet and MSCI didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

Such companies have argued that, if anything, AI would increase the value of their services, making it easier to extract business insights and trading opportunities from the raw material of their data. Companies with proprietary data feeds say even AI tools must use the underlying information they provide to track the markets.

"AI cannot replicate or replace our real-time data," LSEG Chief Executive David Schwimmer said in October.

Write to Alexander Osipovich at alexo@wsj.com and Ben Dummett at ben.dummett@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 04, 2026 08:14 ET (13:14 GMT)

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