Apple firmly responds to shareholder class-action lawsuit: denies allegations of Siri AI delays and the $300 billion fraud claims related to 30% commissions

Tech Home February 27 News, Reuters published a blog today (February 27), reporting that Apple filed documents yesterday (February 26) with the Federal Court in San Jose, California, requesting the federal judge to dismiss a shareholder class-action lawsuit led by South Korea’s National Pension Service.

According to the blog, the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, led by the world’s third-largest pension fund, the National Pension Service, accuse Apple of twice misleading shareholders:

First, exaggerating the development progress of its AI-powered voice assistant Siri;

Second, making false statements about its compliance regarding the application sales commission ban (i.e., the Epic Games case).

Regarding the AI controversy, the plaintiffs argue that the delay in upgrading Siri directly affected iPhone 16 sales and caused investor losses. Apple countered in the submitted documents, stating there is no evidence that the company discussed AI at the June 2024 meeting and already knew that integrating two advanced AI features into Siri would take longer.

In fact, Apple only postponed some Siri upgrades in March of the following year, and CEO Tim Cook publicly admitted two months later that developing a “more personalized” Siri “took longer than we expected.”

On the compliance issue related to the Epic Games case, the dispute stems from a court injunction in 2021. The injunction required Apple to allow app users to pay developers directly via external links, bypassing the App Store’s up to 30% commission.

Apple subsequently introduced a new system charging a 27% commission on some external sales. This approach was severely criticized by the presiding judge, but the federal appeals court partially lifted the sanctions against Apple in December 2025.

Regarding these allegations, Apple argued that it never guaranteed that its procedures to comply with the 2021 injunction were “foolproof.” The class-action lawsuit covers shareholders who held Apple stock from May 3, 2024, to May 1, 2025, claiming that the stock price decline during this period caused potential losses of hundreds of billions of dollars.

To counter the plaintiffs’ logic, Apple emphasized in the documents that facing challenges and experiencing stock price fluctuations in 2025 was not a secret, and this is common among many large companies. Apple believes that blaming the short-term stock price drop directly on securities fraud is an unfounded overreach.