Feb 24 (Reuters) - Thomson Reuters shares jumped more than 11% on Tuesday after the technology and content firm said its artificial intelligence-powered assistant for businesses, CoCounsel, has drawn one million users, easing fears of disruption by competing AI tools.
The stock posted its biggest percentage gain since 2009. The jump also followed Anthropic's announcement on Tuesday that companies including Thomson Reuters were using its AI technology for their products.
A new AI tool from Anthropic
that embeds its Claude AI model into legal workflows had earlier this month sparked an $830 billion global selloff in software and services stocks over six trading days on investors' fears that the technology would shrink revenue streams for the industry. Weighed down by that decline, Thomson Reuters shares remain down more than 30% for the year.
"The legal AI market is maturing, and substance matters more than hype. Our fiduciary-grade AI strategy is driving real adoption - and we have the capital, content, and expertise to shape what comes next," Thomson Reuters President and Chief Executive Officer Steve Hasker said in an emailed response to a query about the stock price move.
The Toronto-based company, which owns Reuters News, launched CoCounsel after buying AI legal startup Casetext in a $650 million deal in 2023. The assistant acts as the core AI engine powering CoCounsel Legal, which automates research, document review and drafting for lawyers.
Thomson Reuters executives told Reuters after the company's quarterly earnings announcement this month that its legal offerings were distinguished from general-purpose AI startups by the company's proprietary intellectual property, including hundreds of years of legal papers from Britain and more than a century of archives from the U.S., much of it undigitized, unpublished or unavailable publicly.
The Legal Professionals division is the biggest revenue generator for Thomson Reuters, accounting for around one-third of its sales.
(Reporting by Aditya Soni in Bengaluru; Editing by Kenneth Li and Edmund Klamann)
