"This Time, the Cybersecurity Industry"...Markets Shaken by Anthropic

Anthropic's artificial intelligence (AI) services in the United States are shaking up even the cybersecurity industry, fueling Anthropic-driven fears that they may encroach on entire industry ecosystems.

ClaudeCode Security. Anthropic.

On February 20 (local time), Anthropic released "Claude Code Security," which adds a security audit function, and share prices of cybersecurity companies have been volatile for days. Concern that growth in the security industry could be threatened pushed down the stock prices of U.S. cybersecurity firms such as CrowdStrike, Okta, and SailPoint by 8-9%.

"Claude Code Security" is a security feature built into the AI coding tool "Claude Code," and it was released in the form of a limited research preview. It reads and reasons over code like a security researcher to detect security vulnerabilities and then suggests fixes to the developer. It can uncover unstructured vulnerabilities that existing security software, which only statically detects known vulnerabilities within pre-registered patterns, has failed to find. In addition, unlike existing security services that stopped at simply finding vulnerabilities, it goes further by presenting concrete, customized remediation proposals.

In the U.S. stock market, sharp price drops triggered by Anthropic have been occurring repeatedly. After the launch of "Claude CoWork," a service that can take over various types of work with AI and build apps, about 300 billion dollars in market capitalization was wiped out from software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies on February 3. After Anthropic released, free of charge, open-source plugins that automate legal, sales, and data analysis work, the share price of legal data company Thomson Reuters plunged by nearly 16%. Subsequently, when "Claude Opus 4.6," which is specialized for financial and knowledge work and can analyze financial statements and market data, was released, the stock prices of related companies fell by as much as 10%.

Meanwhile, Anthropic's Claude Code is also eroding developers' competitive edge. With "vibe coding," which allows people to create code using everyday language, an environment is emerging in which even non-developers can build programs. For example, to mark the first anniversary of the launch of Claude Code, Anthropic recently announced the winners of a hackathon event, and it drew attention when it was revealed that, except for one person among the top five, the rest were not developers but came from diverse professions such as construction, medicine, and music.

Within the industry, the prevailing view is that such AI tools are not completely replacing existing software companies, but are instead structurally transforming how businesses and services operate. An industry official said, "We are at a stage where the market is sorting the wheat from the chaff among existing companies," adding, "If a company has know-how and capabilities related to core technologies, it will be able to evolve through AI."