RELX, Wolters Kluwer Shares Plunge on AI Competition Fears
By Joe Stonor
Shares in European legal publishing companies plunged Tuesday as investors reacted to newly released tools from artificial-intelligence provider Anthropic.
London-listed RELX shares dropped just shy of 13%, or 3.38 pounds, to 22.49 pounds in afternoon European trade, placing it among the steepest fallers in the Europe-wide STOXX 600 index. Wolters Kluwer shares also fell sharply, with the stock down 9.9% to trade at 72.26 euros.
Anthropic, the company behind the AI chatbot Claude, added new functions for legal users of its Cowork assistant on GitHub, a platform where developers can share their software. The company's AI-powered services for legal teams automate "contract review, [non-disclosure agreements] triage, compliance workflows, legal briefings, and templated responses," the startup said on GitHub.
RELX provides a clutch of AI tools for the legal sector, including Lexis+AI and an AI agent through LexisNexis Protege. Wolters Kluwer provides software products for the legal industry.
Investors are concerned about RELX's ability to compete with AI startups in the legal space, ING analysts wrote in a note last month. Legal is the company's third largest division of four, the analysts said.
Other stocks vulnerable to competition from AI startups also fell steeply in afternoon European trade. Education publisher Pearson fell 3.8%, while data broker Experian and data provider London Stock Exchange Group both fell close to 8%.
Write to Joe Stonor at josephmichael.stonor@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 03, 2026 08:58 ET (13:58 GMT)
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