The complaint, Wistisen v. Alibaba Group Holding Limited, filed in the Southern District of New York, alleges that the company and its CEO violated the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The suit claims Alibaba failed to disclose its affiliation with the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, a designation that led to its inclusion on a U.S. Department of Defense list of Chinese military companies on June 8, 2026. This disclosure triggered a nearly 4% decline in the price of Alibaba's American Depositary Shares.

Further legal pressure mounted on June 24, 2026, following a Bloomberg report detailing accusations from Anthropic. The AI startup alleged that operators linked to Alibaba’s Qwen lab illicitly accessed and distilled Claude’s capabilities to develop rival chatbots. Following these reports, Alibaba’s stock fell 2.7% on June 24 and an additional 4.7% the following day. Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP, the firm representing the plaintiffs, asserts that these omissions rendered public statements regarding the company’s business and operational risks materially false.