Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.A selloff in software and data company stocks that began in Europe yesterday has spread to Asia-Pacific markets, via the US, today.Software stocks slid from India to Japan, following losses on Wall Street overnight, on growing concerns that their business models will be devoured by AI.The trigger for the selloff appears to be an updated chatbot release from AI developer Anthropic, the company behind the chatbot Claude, designed to automate legal work such as contract reviewing, non-disclosure agreement triage, compliance workflows, legal briefings and templated responses.The news had an immediate impact in London yesterday, where information and analytics company Relx plunged 14%, UK publishing group Pearson fell by nearly 8%, and the London Stock Exchange Group fell by 13%.

There’s was a knock-on effect since.Last night in New York, Salesforce, Datadog and Adobe lost about 7%, Synopsys and Atlassian fell about 8%, and Intuit slumped 11%, as investors anticipated that their business models could be disrupted by AI.And now the selloff has swept around the globe.Shares of Indian information technology firm bellwether Tata Consultancy Services are down 6.8%, while Infosys has lost more than 8%.

Chinese software companies dropped too, with Kingdee International Software down 12.5%.In Japan, economics data firm Nomura Research Institute fell 8%.The selloff has rattled markets that had only just recovered from the slump in gold and silver last week.Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote, says:The relief that came with the easing selloff across the metals space lasted until news broke that Anthropic, an AI startup backed by Amazon and Google, had rolled out a new AI tool designed to handle legal and research work traditionally done using paid databases.

The announcement spooked markets, triggering a sharp selloff in software companies that sell data analytics and decision-making tools to lawyers, banks and corporates, on fears that AI and new players are coming for their lunch — and at an accelerated pace.9am GMT: Eurozone services PMI report for January9.30am GMT: UK services PMI report for January10am GMT: Eurozone inflation report for January10am GMT: House of Lords inquiry on stablecoins in the UK to hear evidence1.15pm GMT: ADP US private payroll report for January3pm GMT: US services PMI report for JanuaryYesterday’s software sell-off marked “a dramatic acceleration” of the recent trend, says market strategist Jim Reid of Deutsche Bank, adding:It means the 9 worst-performing companies in the S&P 500 YTD are all in the software and related services sectors, having now seen declines of 25% or more.While the question over the end-winners from AI is unlikely to be answered in 2026, 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.

The drawdown in S&P 500 Software stocks is now -25.2% from the high...that's worse than last year's plunge pic.

twitter.com/Th3DR6DVzOIn the insurance world, Zurich appears to have won its battle to aquire smaller rival Beazley after increasing its offer price.The two companies have told the City this morning they’ve reached “agreement in principle” on the key financial terms of a possible recommended cash offer, which values Beazley at £8bn.At 1,310 pence in cash plus a 25p dividend, that’s almost 60% higher than Beazley’s closing share price on 16 January, the last business day before Zurich’s interest was public.Zurich had earlier offered 1,280p a share, but has now bumped it up.

Beazley’s board says it would be minded to recommend the new offer to shareholders, should a firm bid be made – once Zurich has completed its due diligence on the bid.Beazley offers specialist insurance products, across areas including cyber, professional indemnity, property, marine, and reinsurance, and had batted away several previous wooings from Zurich.Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has dismissed fears that artificial intelligence will replace software and related tools, calling the idea “illogical”.Speaking at an artificial intelligence summit in San Francisco hosted by Cisco Systems, Huang said worries that AI will make software companies less relevant are misguided and AI will continue to rely on existing software rather than rebuild basic tools from scratch, Reuters reports.Huang said.

“There’s this notion that the tool in the software industry is in decline, and will be replaced by AI...It is the most illogical thing in the world, and time will prove itself,”“If you were a human or robot, artificial, general robotics, would you use tools or reinvent tools? The answer, obviously, is to use tools..

.That’s why the latest breakthroughs in AI are about tool use, because the tools are designed to be explicit.”Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.A selloff in software and data company stocks that began in Europe yesterday has spread to Asia-Pacific markets, via the US, today.Software stocks slid from India to Japan, following losses on Wall Street overnight, on growing concerns that their business models will be devoured by AI.

The trigger for the selloff appears to be an updated chatbot release from AI developer Anthropic, the company behind the chatbot Claude, designed to automate legal work such as contract reviewing, non-disclosure agreement triage, compliance workflows, legal briefings and templated responses.The news had an immediate impact in London yesterday, where information and analytics company Relx plunged 14%, UK publishing group Pearson fell by nearly 8%, and the London Stock Exchange Group fell by 13%.There’s was a knock-on effect since.Last night in New York, Salesforce, Datadog and Adobe lost about 7%, Synopsys and Atlassian fell about 8%, and Intuit slumped 11%, as investors anticipated that their business models could be disrupted by AI.And now the selloff has swept around the globe.

Shares of Indian information technology firm bellwether Tata Consultancy Services are down 6.8%, while Infosys has lost more than 8%.Chinese software companies dropped too, with Kingdee International Software down 12.5%.In Japan, economics data firm Nomura Research Institute fell 8%.

The selloff has rattled markets that had only just recovered from the slump in gold and silver last week.Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote, says:The relief that came with the easing selloff across the metals space lasted until news broke that Anthropic, an AI startup backed by Amazon and Google, had rolled out a new AI tool designed to handle legal and research work traditionally done using paid databases.The announcement spooked markets, triggering a sharp selloff in software companies that sell data analytics and decision-making tools to lawyers, banks and corporates, on fears that AI and new players are coming for their lunch — and at an accelerated pace.9am GMT: Eurozone services PMI report for January9.30am GMT: UK services PMI report for January10am GMT: Eurozone inflation report for January10am GMT: House of Lords inquiry on stablecoins in the UK to hear evidence1.

15pm GMT: ADP US private payroll report for January3pm GMT: US services PMI report for January