Market & Evidence

Don't take our word for it.

Here are the numbers: how much critical code is locked in place, and what happens when people try to rewrite it. All public, all named, all sourced.

The scale of what's locked in

600–800B+

lines of COBOL still in production worldwide

50–100B

lines of PL/I locked into legacy estates

74%

of legacy modernization projects never completed (Mainframe Modernization Business Barometer)

80%

of AI initiatives abandoned before production (Gartner)

Named, sourced, public

Every entry below rewrote or converted the code. That is exactly what we never do — it's why these failure modes don't apply to the platform.

Program	Cost	Outcome	Source
US Veterans Affairs — EHR Modernization	$13.8B spent, $49.8B projected	Paused after safety and reliability failures (2018–2025)	GAO; Senate VA Committee
US Social Security Administration	$B-scale, ongoing	Decades-old core still in COBOL after repeated attempts	Washington Post; WIRED
UCLA — Financial system replacement	$132M+	Years late, severe operational disruption	Daily Bruin; LA Times
California DMV — Modernization	$208M+	Cancelled after years of missed milestones	LA Times
Texas Office of the Attorney General	$400M+	Child-support system rebuild years late, over budget	Texas Tribune
TSB Bank (UK) — Core Banking Migration	£330M+ losses, £48.7M fine	Severe, sustained outages (2018)	UK FCA / PRA / Parliament
US state unemployment systems	$100Ms combined	Collapsed under pandemic load mid-modernization	US DOL OIG