Anthropic goes from software foe to friend. These stocks should benefit
Anthropic’s Tuesday event positioned its products as additive — rather than threatening — to existing software providers. Wall Street sees that helping some stocks in the space. The buzzy artificial intelligence startup announced updates to its Claude Cowork tool aimed at improving office workers’ productivity. Companies can now connect Cowork to platforms such as Google Drive, Gmail and Docusign under the enhancements. The undisruptive nature of Tuesday’s announcement has allowed software stocks to regain some ground lost following prior rollouts. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (IGV) added nearly 2% in Tuesday’s session following Monday’s drop of more than 4%. Still, the fund has tumbled 24% in 2026. “Anthropic’s announcement is evidence that domain expertise and data assets are crucial in building industry specific AI,” Wells Fargo analyst Jason Haas wrote in a Wednesday note to clients. IGV 5D mountain IGV, 5-day chart Given that take, Haas listed Fair Isaac , Moody’s , S & P Global , Verisk Analytics , Equifax and Thomson Reuters as companies that can benefit. That’s because they offer sector-specific data sets that “are difficult, if not impossible, to replicate,” the analyst said. “They operate in concentrated markets and are regarded as industry standards, with minimal displacement risk,” Haas said. “We see AI as a tailwind that will drive more usage for their data and build differentiated capabilities.” If anything, Tuesday’s event showed Anthropic can’t drive software companies to extinction because it relies on their products, according to RBC’s Matthew Hedberg. Hedberg said traders should view Anthropic as “embracing” the software-as-a-service ecosystem. He pointed to CrowdStrike , Datadog , MongoDB , Cloudflare , Palo Alto Networks and Snowflake . “Ultimately, we believe the event highlighted Anthropic’s need/willingness to partner with existing software companies, rather than a rip-and-replace scenario, which remains underappreciated by investors,” Hedberg wrote in a Tuesday note to clients. Barclays’ Manav Patnaik bolstered Anthropic’s view that 2026 could be the year that AI could move to enterprise-wide deployment. However, he said the company’s sentiment around AI seemed focused on data quality and trust rather than just model performance. That mindset could benefit the information services space, he said. What’s more, the analyst said Anthropic’s partnerships with FactSet and MSCI, as well as S & P Global, continue to be both “logical” and “positive.” Bank of America, meanwhile, found a few stocks that stood to benefit from Tuesday’s gathering. Analyst Curtis Nagle said Cowork’s ability to integrate with Thomson Reuters “reframes” the risk and opportunities AI poses the business in a note titled “AI scare, meet data pair.” Thomson Reuters shares surged more than 11% on Tuesday as the company was an example of integration highlighted during Anthropic’s presentation, marking its best day since 2009. But shares are still down more than 25% year to date, underscoring the strength of the sell-off on fears of AI’s disruption. TRI YTD mountain Thomson Reuters in 2026 “We view the stock’s reaction as a rebuttal to concerns that LLMs (including Claude) pose a risk to TRI’s workflow and research tools,” Nagle write to clients, using an acronym for large-language models. Bank of America’s David Amira said Thomson Reuters’ inclusion in the event has a positive read through for peer RELX . While Anthropic’s release of a legal plugin prompted a derating in the information services sector, Amira said Tuesday’s event signaled an interest in collaborating with specialty data providers. U.S.-listed shares of the LexisNexis parent have dropped 19% this year. But shares jumped more than 2% on Tuesday and have added nearly 5% in midday trading Wednesday. “We continue to view market concerns as overblown,” Amira told clients in a note reiterating its buy rating.
