Accenture's stock declined 0.9% on February 23, 2026. The company announced multi-year alliances with OpenAI, Boston Consulting Group, Capgemini, and McKinsey to accelerate enterprise AI adoption. Accenture also made regular AI tool use a requirement for internal leaders seeking promotion and agreed to acquire Verum Partners, with terms undisclosed. Despite these announcements, the stock faced broader market pressure. Accenture shares were down 10.3% over the past week and 28.4% over the past month as of the reporting date. The decline occurred amid uneven consulting demand and broader tech sector weakness. Additionally, Anthropic's announcement of Claude Code, an AI tool for COBOL modernization, negatively impacted Accenture and other consulting firms with legacy system modernization practices. Enterprise AI adoption has been slow due to customers struggling to see practical productivity gains.
Read full analysisAccenture's stock declined 0.9% on February 23, 2026. The company announced multi-year alliances with OpenAI, Boston Consulting Group, Capgemini, and McKinsey to accelerate enterprise AI adoption. Accenture also made regular AI tool use a requirement for internal leaders seeking promotion and agreed to acquire Verum Partners, with terms undisclosed. Despite these announcements, the stock faced broader market pressure. Accenture shares were down 10.3% over the past week and 28.4% over the past month as of the reporting date. The decline occurred amid uneven consulting demand and broader tech sector weakness. Additionally, Anthropic's announcement of Claude Code, an AI tool for COBOL modernization, negatively impacted Accenture and other consulting firms with legacy system modernization practices. Enterprise AI adoption has been slow due to customers struggling to see practical productivity gains.
Accenture is one of the world's largest technology consulting and professional services firms, with over 700,000 employees helping enterprises modernize IT systems, implement new technologies, and manage digital transformations. The company generates significant revenue from legacy system modernization — particularly COBOL codebases in banking, government, and airlines — which is now directly threatened by AI automation tools from Anthropic and others. This AI disruption risk sits at the center of the stock's steep 2026 selloff.