# Phoebe Gates’s Phia Drama Is Getting Even Stickier

**By:** Emma Childs  
**Published:** 2026-08-13T12:19:39.668-04:00  
**Source:** [The Cut](https://www.thecut.com/article/phoebe-gates-phia-drama-cookie-stuffing.html)

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Phoebe Gates’s Phia Drama Is Getting Even Stickier

                

                

    
 

      
        
          

            

      

        

    
  
      
          
            

            
              
                  Photo: Kimberly White/Getty Images for TechCrunch
              

            

              

        Phia co-founders Phoebe Gates (yes, as in the daughter of Microsoft’s Bill) and Sophia Kianni are in hot water. According to a new report from Bloomberg, the entrepreneurs knowingly pushed for features in their AI shopping platform’s software that took credit for — and earned profits on — sales Phia didn’t actually drive. Internal Slack channels shared with the outlet revealed Gates and Kianni had been aware of the practice since at least December 2025. This contradicts Phia’s previous statement, which claimed the issue was due to a software bug its team discovered when Bloomberg initially reached out for comment in July. Mess!

  Gates, 23, started Phia in 2025, marketing it as a “personal shopping assistant.” The Phia browser extension purports to help customers find pieces of clothing at the lowest price across thousands of sites. When a shopper uses Phia to make a purchase, the company earns commission from driving that sale to its retailer brand partners. Except now, Phia has been caught double-dipping.

  Independent researcher and consultant Ben Edelman, Bloomberg, and Capital One found the company was engaging in an affiliate-marketing no-no known as “cookie stuffing,” which fraudulently tracks referrals to earn commission on sales it didn’t drive. Under United States federal law, cookie stuffing is prosecuted as wire fraud, with a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison, plus financial penalties and asset restitution.

  Bloomberg discovered the specifics of Phia’s shady e-commerce features, including one internally called “passive trigger,” which automatically dropped cookies every two hours on sites users had previously interacted with. Another inserted cookies if a shopper clicked anywhere on a checkout screen page featuring a Phia pop-up box — including if the user tried to close the pop-up.

  According to internal Slack conversations, both Gates and Kianni were concerned Phia wasn’t auto-cookie-dropping enough. “Worried this is an issue across the board,” Gates wrote on December 18. “Can u confirm auto pop for cookie drop is live on ALL sites w a coupon to confirm we are monetizing on all [gross merchandise value].” In another Slack, Kianni wrote, “Whatever we can do to keep these cookies dropping will be amazing thank you.”

  In a public statement, a Phia spokesperson reiterated that the company removed these features on July 7. Bloomberg’s reporting found that the company’s average daily revenue dropped from about $80,000 to between $10,000 and $28,000 following the reversal. “We are reviewing every transaction, we are fully committed to and have already begun issuing all transaction reversals to brand partners as a result of any misattribution, and we are hiring a head of compliance to make sure something like this never happens again,” the spokesperson said. “We will learn from this and want to ensure our users have the best possible shopping experience, with features like our new digital closet and more to come.”

  The Cut has reached out to Phia for comment and will update this post when we hear back.