Sabri Beneshour

In New York, I'm Sabri Beneshour with the Marketplace Morning Report.

From APM American Public Media.

AI is starting to close its jaws around traditional tech.

From Marketplace, I'm Sabri Beneshour, in for David Brancaccio.

Software companies are in trouble, or at least their stocks are.

Salesforce helps businesses with software for sales and marketing and customer service.

Its stock is down 25% this year, and it is barely February.

Intuit, they make software to help with accounting and taxes.

Their stock is down 31% this year.

And software stocks in general, according to an S&P index, are down 17%.

The reason for all of this?

Artificial intelligence.

The startup Anthropic just released a new automation tool that investors fear could make many software companies obsolete.

Marketplace's Nova Sappho has more.

It is not just software stocks that are on a rickety ride.

Bitcoin is tanking.

It is under $70,000 now, lost nearly half of its value since last October.

Other cryptocurrencies are also down.

Marketplace's Nancy Marshall-Genzer explains what is going on.

If we wanted to know exactly how the labor market was doing, we would normally just look it up at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.