Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.A selloff in software and data company stocks that began in Europe yesterday has spread to Asia-Pacific markets, via the US, today.Software stocks slid from India to Japan, following losses on Wall Street overnight, on growing concerns that their business models will be devoured by AI.The trigger for the selloff appears to be an updated chatbot release from AI developer Anthropic, the company behind the chatbot Claude, designed to automate legal work such as contract reviewing, non-disclosure agreement triage, compliance workflows, legal briefings and templated responses.The news had an immediate impact in London yesterday, where information and analytics company Relx plunged 14%, UK publishing group Pearson fell by nearly 8%, and the London Stock Exchange Group fell by 13%.Anthropic’s launch of AI legal tool hits shares in European data companiesRead moreThere’s was a knock-on effect since. Last night in New York, Salesforce, Datadog and Adobe lost about 7%, Synopsys and Atlassian fell about 8%, and Intuit slumped 11%, as investors anticipated that their business models could be disrupted by AI.And now the selloff has swept around the globe. Shares of Indian information technology firm bellwether Tata Consultancy Services are down 6.8%, while Infosys has lost more than 8%.Chinese software companies dropped too, with Kingdee International Software down 12.5%.In Japan, economics data firm Nomura Research Institute fell 8%.The selloff has rattled markets that had only just recovered from the slump in gold and silver last week.Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote, says: The relief that came with the easing selloff across the metals space lasted until news broke that Anthropic, an AI startup backed by Amazon and Google, had rolled out a new AI tool designed to handle legal and research work traditionally done using paid databases. The announcement spooked markets, triggering a sharp selloff in software companies that sell data analytics and decision-making tools to lawyers, banks and corporates, on fears that AI and new players are coming for their lunch — and at an accelerated pace. The agenda 9am GMT: Eurozone services PMI report for January 9.30am GMT: UK services PMI report for January 10am GMT: Eurozone inflation report for January 10am GMT: House of Lords inquiry on stablecoins in the UK to hear evidence 1.15pm GMT: ADP US private payroll report for January 3pm GMT: US services PMI report for January