Shares of Workday Inc tumbled nearly 10% in premarket trading on Wednesday after the human resources and payroll software maker issued a weaker-than-expected revenue forecast, raising concerns about slowing demand.
The California-based company has already seen its stock decline by about 40% on Nasdaq so far this year as investors grow wary of increasing competition from artificial intelligence-driven tools.
Anthropic’s recent launches have fuelled fears that automation could erode demand for traditional software platforms, causing a widespread sell-off across different sectors such as cybersecurity.
Workday CEO moves to reassure investors
The latest slide leaves Workday among the worst-performing US software stocks this year. Meanwhile, the company’s CEO and co-founder, Aneel Bhusri, sought to calm investor concerns, spending a major portion of the post-earnings call on Tuesday highlighting the company’s position amid widespread anxiety over AI.
“Just for what it is worth, Anthropic, Google and OpenAI all run Workday,” Bhusri, who returned as chief executive this month after stepping down as Workday’s co-CEO in 2024, was quoted as saying by Reuters.
“No amount of Vibe coding is going to produce an HR or an ERP system. That kind of complexity is very hard to replicate,” he further added.
Anthropic offerings cause sell-off across sectors
US equity markets, which entered 2026 on a constructive note and extended the strong momentum built in the latter half of last year, have lost steam in February, with several technology stocks leading the pullback on Wall Street.
This widespread sell-off was triggered by the launch of certain advanced tools, especially from startups like Anthropic’s Claude Code, which has led the Street to worry that these powerful innovations have the potential to disrupt traditional software business models.
Anthropic said on Monday that its Claude Code tool could be used to modernise a programming language running on IBM systems, triggering a 13% crash in IBM shares on the same day, marking its largest single-day drop since October 2000.
In a separate development, the AI service company on Friday rolled out a powerful new security feature within its Claude AI model. Shares of several cybersecurity companies such as Crowdstrike, Rubrik, Okta plunged after Anthropic published a blog post announcing the launch.
Disclaimer: This story is for educational purposes only. We advise investors to check with certified experts before making any investment decisions.
