



Indian IT stocks take a beating as AI automation tools signal an agentic shift
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Shares of top Indian information technology (IT) services firms fell sharply in early trade on Wednesday, mirroring the drop in US technology and software stocks overnight after American AI firm Palantir launched a new tool that threatens an important revenue stream of these companies. Shares of Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Infosys Ltd, HCL Technologies Ltd, Wipro Ltd, and Tech Mahindra Ltd were down 5.1%, 5.96%, 4.94%, 3.36%, and 4.61%, respectively in early trade.
When Palantir announced its earnings on Monday, it revealed that its Hivemind AI can now autonomously migrate data from ageing legacy systems—a task that has been a bread-and-butter revenue stream for Indian IT firms for decades. Before that, generative AI startup Anthropic sparked anxiety last Friday, when it upgraded its Claude Cowork AI agent with specialized plug-ins designed to automate core business functions. These updates allow the agent to move beyond simple conversation and execute multi-step workflows directly within a company's files and apps.
For instance, the new tools can autonomously track, review, and summarize legal documents, or link directly to data dashboards and spreadsheets to analyze trends and generate financial models. All of this caused an overnight sell-off in shares of Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday. Infosys shares fell 5.56% to $17.32, while Wipro shares fell 4.83% to $2.56 before their Indian counterparts went into freefall on Wednesday morning.
Fractal co-founder Srikanth Velamakanni attributed the fall in Indian IT services stocks to the new AI automation tools. “In India, a lot of enterprise services rely on unstructured data. Those stocks are clearly
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