What is COBOL?
COBOL, which stands for Common Business-Oriented Language, is a programming language created in 1959 which is still widely used for business and financial data processing. The language was created by a consortium called the Conference on Data Systems Languages (CODASYL), with the first version coming out in 1960.
The language was meant to serve as a stopgap solution, but the US Department of Defence quickly realised its usefulness and mandated computer manufacturers to offer it.
Despite over 65 years of existence, COBOL has remained popular and, according to an IBM blog post, supports 80% of in-person credit card transactions and 95% of all ATM transactions, while generating over $3 billion in commerce each day.
According to the company, an estimated 250 billion lines of COBOL code are in production use across sectors such as financial services, government, logistics, manufacturing and retail.
What did Anthropic say?
In a blog post on Monday, Anthropic talked about the enduring relevance of COBOL across critical systems in finance, airlines and government. The company also discussed the shrinking number of people who understand COBOL and the minuscule replacement rates for the language.
“Modernising a COBOL system once required armies of consultants spending years mapping workflows. This resulted in large timelines and high costs that few were willing to take on,” Anthropic wrote in a blog post.
The company, however, states that modern AI tools like Claude Code can ‘automate the exploration and analysis phases’ which consume most of the time in COBOL modernisation.
According to Anthropic, AI systems can map dependencies across large codebases, document workflows, identify risks, and surface opportunities for refactoring, helping teams better understand legacy systems before attempting migration.
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