When Nancy McKinstry announced last year that she would quit as boss of Wolters Kluwer after 23 years, the data company was worth 180 euros per share – a celebration for investors who saw the price rise steadily for years. But when McKinstry presents its latest annual figures on February 25, it will probably mainly focus on threatening AI applications that drove the share back to 70 euros this week.
Like many industry peers, Wolters Kluwer appeared to be on sale in recent days. Recently launched artificial intelligence features from US AI company Anthropic sparked unrest in financial markets. This new technology would put pressure on the revenue model of traders in business and other professional data.
Wolters Kluwer has lost 10 percent of its market value since Tuesday morning, while British-Dutch competitor RELX has lost approximately 11 percent. Quotes from foreign peers also turned dark red; For example, the Canadian-American Thomson Reuters and the British Pearson were hit. Financial news agency Bloomberg estimated the loss of value of the sector at 285 billion dollars (241 billion euros).
Four questions about Anthropic’s new AI application.
1What’s going on?
Last Friday, Anthropic presented some new features for Claude Cowork. That AI model has been available for two months to, among other things, organize data and create summaries of files. Cowork exists alongside the chat application Claude, which has been active for some time, a competitor of ChatGPT.
The latest update of Claude Cowork contains functions that should make it easier for lawyers, for example, to scan contracts for risks or to draw up legal documents such as non-disclosure agreements. The technology can sift through large amounts of data.
The stock exchanges did not immediately respond to the introduction; the prices of RELX and Wolters Kluwer remained relatively flat on Monday. Only the next day, after panic had broken out among investors in data companies in the US, did the two AEX funds also collapse.
2What do Wolters Kluwer and RELX do?
Groups such as RELX and Wolters Kluwer offer paid access to large files including scientific articles, legal and financial information. Their subscriptions are used, for example, by law firms and pharmaceutical companies. Insurers use the data to detect insurance fraud.
In recent years, data companies have invested heavily in artificial intelligence to make their files more searchable. In this way, automated summaries of publications in specific legal areas can be created. Thanks to AI deployment, customers also gain better insight into – the source of – underlying data. Law firms and medical companies pay handsomely for access to these types of files.
At RELX, the Legal branch, which houses legal services, was the fastest growing part in the first half of 2025. Divisional turnover there grew by 9 percent in the first six months to £900 million out of a company total of £4.7 billion. At WoltersKluwer, this division was up 6 percent to 458 million euros on a total turnover of more than 3 billion euros in the same period.
3Why is Claude Cowork a threat to data companies?
Claude Cowork could harm this subscription model. AI technology that offers legal information for free or at a much lower price could seriously pressure the revenues of traditional data trading. Customers are faced with the question of why they would pay a lot of money for software and information from RELX or Wolters Kluwer if they can also collect the desired information themselves thanks to AI.
And that in turn puts the ax to the root of the data companies. Is their valuation on the stock exchange still justified? Can they still grow, or even maintain their revenues? That uncertainty led shareholders to sell off.
“Investors are weighing their investments on a large scale,” Jonathan McMullan, market analyst at British investment house Schroders, said this week to Reuters news agency. “The pace at which AI applications are being developed makes long-term valuations more difficult to defend, especially as AI applications allow companies to do more work with fewer staff, putting pressure on the traditional subscription model.”
4Is the panic justified?
It is still difficult to say whether the exodus from data traders on the stock exchanges was justified. Challengers like Anthropic and OpenAI (from ChatGPT) still have one major problem: the information from their AI models is not always reliable. Customers cannot rely on it.
And that weighs heavily in legal services, for example. Contracts must be watertight and their content also varies per customer. Lawyers and doctors will therefore not easily leave these drafts entirely to Claude Cowork. But these types of AI models can take over some of the manual work.
What Wolters Kluwer and RELX have an advantage over these types of applications: their data is not accessible to Anthropic. The databases containing large amounts of high-quality information are closed. Outsiders like Anthropic and OpenAI cannot easily access this. Nancy McKinstry will probably emphasize this at her farewell: for reliable information, customers must go to the data groups.
Some analysts doubt whether the new technology will really disrupt the market that much. The presentation of the Chinese AI robot DeepSeek – which is said to be better, faster and cheaper than ChatGPT – also briefly caused widespread panic last year. Yet the share price of AI chip maker Nvidia, supplier to ChatGPT, recovered quickly.
“We are in a phase where the sector is not only presumed guilty until proven guilty, but has already been convicted before trial,” JP Morgan analyst Toby Ogg concluded this week about the sell-off.
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