Software ate the world. AI just started eating software back.
Anthropic's Claude Cowork plugins wiped tens of billions off software valuations in days. Thomson Reuters down 35%. RELX, Wolters Kluwer, FactSet, Morningstar all cratering — in a straight line, the moment the plugins launched.
This is what disruption looks like in 2026. Not a slow erosion. A cliff edge, visible in real time on a Reuters chart.
These aren't peripheral players. Thomson Reuters and RELX are the backbone of legal, financial, and scientific information infrastructure. Their value proposition — aggregated, curated, searchable knowledge — is exactly what capable AI agents can now replicate at the point of need, without a subscription.
The companies that survived the internet weren't the ones who moved their print content online. They were the ones who asked what they could do that the internet couldn't. The question for information businesses now is the same: what do you offer that an AI agent genuinely cannot?
The answer exists. But the window to find it is shorter than most boards have scheduled a strategy review for.
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