Wall Street faces renewed volatility as AI-linked stocks tumbled Monday amid growing doubts about massive technology spending. Visa, Mastercard, and IBM led the declines after a viral weekend analysis from Citrini Research warned of an eventual market crash and widespread white-collar layoffs by 2028. The S&P 500 remains roughly flat for the year despite AI's previous role in driving market records.

IBM suffered its worst single-day drop since October 2000 after Anthropic announced its Claude Code tool could update legacy computing languages central to IBM's business. The announcement rattled investors about AI's potential to disrupt traditional consulting and professional services. Accenture and Cognizant Technology shares also fell as traders reassessed the threat to maintenance and modernization work.

Financial and consumer discretionary sectors led Monday's broader market decline, with financials down 3.3% and consumer discretionary falling 2.2%. Payment companies like American Express were particularly hard hit as investors contemplated reduced consumer spending in an AI-driven future. While some software stocks rebounded Tuesday following new AI integrations, the episode highlights how quickly sentiment has shifted since November when AI-powered coding systems like Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex surged in popularity among developers.