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European publishing and analytics stocks were under pressure on Wednesday, extending declines from Tuesday’s session after AI company Anthropic’s launch of productivity tools prompted a sell-off among a group of perceived losers from artificial intelligence.

Anthropic’s suite of new tools for its Claude Cowork platform, released on Friday, promises to automate company tasks, including legal work, marketing and customer support. The release has unnerved investors about the impact of the technology on media and analytics businesses, sending share prices sharply lower.

The London Stock Exchange Group fell 2.5 per cent, adding to a 12.8 per cent fall on Tuesday. FTSE 100 media and data company Relx was 2.3 per cent lower, after shedding 14.4 per cent in the previous session.

Advertising companies were also hit, with Publicis declining another 3.3 per cent on top of 9.2 per cent on Tuesday, and WPP dropping a further 3.1 per cent after Tuesday’s 11.8 per cent fall.

“Recent months have seen a clear shift in markets from AI euphoria towards more differentiation between companies, and growing concern about its disruption to existing business models,” wrote Jim Reid, head of macro research at Deutsche Bank.

The moves follow a Wall Street tech sell-off on Tuesday led by analytics stocks and software groups, amid fears that AI tools will ultimately hurt their businesses too.

Gartner and S&P Global dropped 20.9 per cent and 11.3 per cent respectively, while Intuit and Equifax both declined more than 10 per cent.

Last year, Anthropic launched Claude Code, its AI-coding tool, which has quickly become the gold standard for AI coding for enterprises. The tool reached $1bn in revenue in only six months. 

In January, the San Francisco-based company launched Claude Cowork, a user-friendly interface which allows anyone to play around with Claude Code without technical skills. Claude Cowork lets users create AI agents that can help with basic computing tasks such as file management. 

Last Friday, Anthropic launched a series of open source plug-ins for Cowork tools that are tailored to specific use cases. One of them included a tool for legal services, which lets users do tasks such as automating contract review. 

Shares of several software companies listed in Asia also fell sharply, including Australia’s Xero, China’s Hong Kong-listed Kingsoft Corporation, and Indian IT services groups Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services.

Marija Veitmane, head of equity research at State Street, said the “apocalyptic” reaction by the market was “overly pessimistic” about the impact of the new technology on some of the data companies.

“I don’t think we can completely replace data analytics and software writing,” she said. “Of course, there is adjustment, but those companies will end up being more efficient.”

“It’s incremental improvement, rather than total revolution.”