Thomson Reuters slumps amid worries over legal AI disruption

Shares of Thomson Reuters are down 17.5% at $122.72 on Tuesday days after Anthropic upgraded its AI chat bot with tools that would automate tasks including legal work, sparking investor worries about a probable AI-fueled disruption

TRI is on track for its biggest daily pct drop on record as well as its seventh straight session of losses. It is also set for its lowest close sine June 2022

Anthropic announced on Friday that it had released plug ins for its Claude Cowork agent that would automate tasks including sales, legal and financial analysis

TRI generates a lot of revenue by providing data and technology services to law firms, tax and accounting professionals. It is also the parent company of Reuters News

"Generally, software companies across the board have really, really been challenged just on the whole thinking of various parts of AI disrupting their business models," said Mike Archibald, portfolio manager at AGF Investments in Toronto. "I think Anthropic came out with some plug-ins to tackle the legal space. Obviously, that's where Thomson Reuters generates a good chunk of their revenues."

Britain's RELX REL.L and the Netherlands’ Wolters Kluwer WLSNc.AS, both providers of legal analytics services, fell as much as 17% and 13% respectively amid a broader selloff in European and North American software companies

TRI is now down 32% YTD with today's move