NEW YORK — In a dramatic reversal of the prevailing market sentiment that has battered the technology sector for weeks, shares of Thomson Reuters (NYSE: TRI) soared nearly 14% on Tuesday, February 24, 2026. The rally, which added billions to the company’s market capitalization, was ignited by a dual announcement: its flagship AI assistant, CoCounsel, has officially surpassed one million active professional users, and the company has solidified a deep architectural partnership with AI powerhouse Anthropic.

The surge stands as a stark counter-narrative to the "SaaSpocalypse" of early 2026—a broader software sell-off that has seen industry titans like Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) and Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE) lose a quarter of their value since the start of the year. While the market has grown increasingly skeptical of the "per-seat" subscription models that defined the cloud era, Thomson Reuters has managed to convince investors that its proprietary data and specialized "agentic" AI tools are not just resilient to disruption, but are the primary beneficiaries of the next phase of the intelligence revolution.

Breaking the Sell-Off Spell: The Road to One Million Users

The catalyst for Tuesday’s historic gain was a 7:00 AM ET press release detailing the rapid global adoption of CoCounsel, the generative AI professional assistant Thomson Reuters acquired via its $650 million purchase of Casetext in 2023. Reaching one million users across 107 countries in less than three years marks one of the fastest adoption rates for a specialized enterprise AI tool in history. Unlike general-purpose chatbots, CoCounsel is designed for high-stakes environments—legal, tax, and risk—where accuracy is non-negotiable and hallucinations can lead to catastrophic professional liability.

The timeline leading to this milestone was fraught with volatility. In late January 2026, Thomson Reuters shares had plummeted nearly 20% following news that Anthropic was launching its own legal-automation "plugins." Investors initially feared that general AI models would commoditize the legal research and tax advisory services that form the backbone of TRI’s revenue. However, today’s announcement clarified that Thomson Reuters is not competing with Anthropic, but rather re-engineering CoCounsel as a "purpose-built agent" using the Anthropic Claude Agent SDK. By combining its 175-year-old proprietary database of case law and tax codes with Claude’s advanced reasoning, TRI has effectively built a "walled garden" that general AI models cannot replicate without access to its underlying intellectual property.

Winners and Losers in the AI Pivot

The market reaction on Tuesday suggests a major shift in how investors value technology companies. Thomson Reuters (NYSE: TRI) emerged as the undisputed winner, proving that in the age of generative AI, the "tool" is secondary to the "truth." Because TRI owns the authoritative data (Westlaw, Practical Law, and Checkpoint), it acts as a data tollbooth for the legal and accounting professions. Similarly, its European peer RELX (NYSE: RELX) and the Dutch information giant Wolters Kluwer (OTC: WTKWY) saw sympathetic gains of 6% and 4%, respectively, as the market began to favor "Information-as-a-Service" (IaaS) over traditional software.

Conversely, the losers of this shift remain the traditional "seat-based" software giants. Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) and ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW) have struggled to maintain their valuations in 2026 as autonomous AI agents begin to reduce the headcount required for routine corporate tasks. If a single AI agent can do the work of five junior analysts, the need for five software licenses evaporates. While these companies are racing to pivot to consumption-based pricing, Thomson Reuters' model—which charges for access to mission-critical, verified information—appears far more insulated from the "seat apocalypse" currently haunting the SaaS world.

The 'Vertical AI' Revolution vs. General Software

This event marks a significant turning point in the broader industry trend known as "Vertical AI." For the past decade, the software industry followed a horizontal growth path, building tools like CRMs or project management platforms that applied to every industry. However, the 2026 sell-off has exposed the vulnerability of these horizontal tools: they are easily disrupted by custom AI agents that can "vibe code" or automate workflows without a third-party platform.

Thomson Reuters’ success illustrates that the new "moat" in tech is not the code, but the proprietary, human-validated data that powers the models. While an AI can draft a contract, it cannot do so reliably without access to the latest, most accurate legal precedents—data that TRI has spent over a century curating. This "trusted logic" moat is becoming the primary filter for institutional investors. Furthermore, the partnership with Anthropic highlights a move away from the "all-in-one" platform strategy toward a modular approach, where specialized agents leverage the best general models via specialized SDKs to perform multi-step professional tasks.

The Next Frontier: Agentic AI and the 'Digital Professional'

Looking ahead, the success of CoCounsel signals a strategic pivot toward "agentic AI"—tools that don't just answer questions but perform entire workflows. Thomson Reuters confirmed it has roughly $11 billion in capital capacity through 2028, much of which is earmarked for acquisitions in the autonomous agent space. The goal is to move beyond "search and summarize" to "execute and verify," where a "Digital Lawyer" or "Digital Tax Accountant" powered by TRI data can perform 80% of the manual labor currently handled by junior associates.

In the short term, the market will be watching TRI’s upcoming quarterly reports to see if the user growth translates into the forecasted 8% organic revenue surge for late 2026. The challenge for the company will be navigating the potential for "cannibalization" of its own traditional services. However, management has signaled a willingness to disrupt its own business model before a competitor does, shifting from a per-user pricing structure to a value-based model that reflects the time saved by its AI agents.

Data as the Ultimate Advantage: A Market Wrap-Up

The 14% surge in Thomson Reuters (NYSE: TRI) stock on February 24, 2026, is more than just a successful earnings story; it is a signal that the "Golden Age of SaaS" is being replaced by the "Era of the Expert Agent." The key takeaway for investors is the massive differentiation between companies that provide "empty" software tools and those that provide "intelligent" data. As the software sector at large grapples with a structural repricing, TRI has provided a blueprint for how legacy incumbents can survive and thrive by leaning into their proprietary information assets.

Moving forward, the market will likely continue to punish software companies reliant on human-seat counts while rewarding those that can prove their AI tools are essential for accuracy and compliance in regulated industries. Investors should closely monitor TRI’s integration of the Anthropic Claude Agent SDK and any further M&A activity in the specialized AI space. For now, Thomson Reuters has successfully broken the "AI disruption" narrative, turning what was once feared as an existential threat into a powerful tailwind for growth.

This content is intended for informational purposes only and is not financial advice.