What does Anthropic's Legal assault mean for RELX?
RELX has gone from AI darling to AI loser almost overnight, with Anthropic's Legal AI plugin intensifying these fears. What does this mean for the company and investors?
RELX, the provider of specialist data, information and software to legal, academic and risk markets has seen its share price almost halve over the last year.
The reason is fears around artificial intelligence (AI).
This time last year, RELX was seen as an AI beneficiary. That narrative has shifted rapidly, as it has for so many software and data businesses.
Investors fear that AI could significantly disrupt its business model. Those fears intensified further yesterday with the launch of Anthropic’s Legal AI plugin, sending RELX’s share price down another 15% on the day.
What does this launch mean for RELX? How likely is to to be disrupted? And what does it all mean for investors? I’ve followed and invested in RELX for many years. Let me share a few thoughts.
Important: The information on this website is for informational purposes only. It is not a personal recommendation to invest. If you’re unsure, please seek advice. Investments are for the long term. They are high risk and can fall as well as rise in value: you could lose all the money you invest. Past performance is not a guide to the future. I own shares in RELX.
What Anthropic has launched and why it matters
Anthropic has launched a legal plugin aimed squarely at the legal workflows of in-house counsel. It aims to ‘assist’ lawyers with various tasks including contract review, sorting non-disclosure agreements, compliance checks, briefings and templated responses.
The reason this is seen as a big deal is because it’s the first time the owner and developer of a Large Language Model (LLM) is packaging a legal workflow product directly into its platform, rather than merely supplying an API to legal-tech vendors.
In other words, in turns Anthropic into a direct competitor.
Until now, many legal AI vendors, including RELX, have built their products on top of the LLMs, assuming that the model layer remains a neutral player. But now Anthropic is circumventing the legal player and going straight to the customer, providing its own wrapper and workflow tools.
What might this mean for RELX?
Let’s step back a moment and analyse RELX’s AI strategy.
RELX has spent the last few years developing its own AI tools, integrated with its own electronic reference content.
These tools, which aren’t tied to any single LLM, are sold through the Lexis+ AI platform. This in turn is powered by LexisNexis Protégé, RELX’s next generation personalised AI workflow tool, which leverages Lexis Nexis content, and the customer's own proprietary documents.
Lexis+ AI is billed as the ‘All-in-one Legal AI solution’. And, it has to be said, demand for the platform has been strong to date. In the third quarter of 2025, RELX’s Legal division grew underlying revenue by 9% (compared to just 2% growth six years ago), with double-digit growth at law firms and corporate legal firms. A big reason for this accelerated growth is demand for AI tools.
So, RELX has done well up until now at selling its AI solutions. But the question is whether Anthropic’s launch of AI legal tools might change this?
I think it is unlikely, at least for the next year or two, for one very important reason. Access to data.
Lexis+ AI draws on rich, deep and proprietary data sets which no LLM possesses. This is a significant advantage for complex legal research where authority, accuracy and grounded citations are crucial. For example, many legal cases hinge on something that happened 80 years ago. Those archives have disappeared. RELX has that history of record.
This is why Anthropic is currently focused on automating routine legal tasks, rather than more complex functions. If Anthropic wants to mount a serious competitive challenge for more complex legal research functions, it will almost certainly need access to the proprietary content. Without this, RELX and its main competitor, Thomson Reuters, will continue to have the upper hand.
However…
With all that said, it would be foolish to dismiss this threat from Anthropic. It is real, it is credible and it could do damage to RELX’s business.
How so?
Well, intensifying competition is never a good thing for any business. And Anthropic is an absolute beast of a competitor.
It is already a behemoth and its growth is explosive, with projected 2026 revenues of $18 to 26 billion, up from c. $1 billion in early 2025. This revenue growth and general AI hype means Anthropic is very well funded, currently valued at $350 billion, meaning it has deep pockets (at least while the funding taps remain on). In addition, investors don’t seem to mind that it is unprofitable and burning through cash.
No matter how strong your competitive advantages, a huge, deep-pocketed competitor that prioritises revenue growth over profit and cash can potentially do quite a lot of damage.
What’s more, Anthropic has the potential to bundle this legal AI plugin with other AI products it has developed - for sales, marketing, finance and other enterprise functions. It can potentially offer legal customers a very good deal if they choose to take several products in the bundle, strengthening its distribution power.
Once it has gained this distribution foothold, Anthropic could also start to launch more products tailored to the legal profession. This legal plugin might just be the first of many launches. So, while it may not seem like much of a ‘game changer’ right now, this could change and the competitive threat could easily intensify.
How this might impact RELX?
Personally, I think it’s unlikely that RELX’s Legal business will be significantly disrupted. The proprietary data it possesses is exceptionally valuable - it is vast, it is trusted, it is accurate and it stretches back decades. It is also supported by well over 1,000 subject matter experts. This is very difficult for Anthropic or anyone else to replicate.
However, I do see two main risks - a loss of pricing power and an erosion of margins.
RELX needs to be able to charge enough for its AI tools in order to make this investment worthwhile. If Anthropic or other players have decent competing AI solutions, this could prove a challenge.
In addition, even if RELX’s customers continue to renew their core subscriptions for the proprietary content (and the AI solutions that sit on top of them); they might look elsewhere for other solutions, like AI add-ons, especially if they are priced more keenly.
Historically, RELX has been able to provide more value to customers (e.g. through launching new and better product solutions) and in turn capture a greater share of wallet. If AI competitors are the ones adding incremental value rather than RELX, this virtuous flywheel stops. RELX won’t necessarily lose customers, but incremental dollars will go elsewhere and growth could grind to a halt. Over time, it could gradually lose relevance.
Another thing to consider is whether RELX decides to double-down on its AI investments to defend its competitive position. Does it decide to go harder and faster? Or does it risk leaving the less complex and more generalised AI tasks to others like Anthropic, allowing these competitors to gain a stronger foothold? So far, RELX’s AI investments do not seem to have impacted margins, but perhaps this changes?
Uncertainty is rife
I genuinely have no idea whether AI presents more of a risk or an opportunity to RELX.
Investors like things to be black or white, but business is very grey. Labelling a company as an ‘AI winner’ or ‘AI loser’ is far too simplistic. RELX may gain in some places from AI and lose in others. I guess we will know more in a few years time.
One thing’s for sure, there is no sign of this ‘AI loser’ narrative for RELX (and many other software/data businesses) going away any time soon.
Every time Anthropic or one of the other Large Language Models launches a new product, expect the shares to be hit. The same goes for any time an established software or data business reports slightly underwhelming earnings.
The problem is, the risks to RELX’s business are not likely to show up in the next few quarters. It will be several years before we have a clearer understanding of whether AI is a help, hindrance or something much worse.
That means uncertainty is here to stay and the chance of the share price returning to previous highs in the near future seems slim to me, unless something drastically changes.
How I’m responding
I’ve always viewed RELX as a high quality and well-managed business. But AI presents the biggest change to its business I’ve seen since the print to digital transition. RELX reports its full-year results on 12 February. It will be very interesting to hear what management have to say about the Anthropic launch and general AI threats/opportunities. I intend to report back!
In the next couple of sections, I set out my views today, given these growing AI risks. I discuss how I value RELX and what I am doing with my own holding. These next sections are for paying subscribers. A subscription is £25 per month or £195 for the whole year - a 35% discount.