Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, the co-founders of the AI-powered shopping startup Phia, pushed for software features that took credit for online sales the company had no role in generating, according to a new Bloomberg investigation by reporter Olivia Solon. The report draws on internal Slack communications and sources familiar with the matter, who said the two founders knew about the practice for at least seven months, dating back to December.
Phia launched in April 2025 as a browser extension and mobile app billed as a “personal shopping assistant” that compares prices across new, resale, and luxury retail sites. Like many similar tools, it operates on an affiliate marketing model, earning a commission whenever a user completes a purchase after clicking through the app. According to Bloomberg, internal messages show the founders were aware their platform’s tracking software was misattributing sales to Phia that other referral sources had actually driven.
Separate testing by Bloomberg, the researcher Ben Edelman, and Capital One Shopping reportedly found that Phia’s extension used a technique commonly known as cookie stuffing quietly inserting its own affiliate tracking code onto retailer websites, sometimes overriding legitimate referral codes placed there by other publishers who had genuinely sent the shopper to the site. That would have allowed Phia to collect commissions on purchases it never actually influenced, diverting revenue that should have gone to the publishers who did the work of bringing in the customer.
A Phia spokesperson has acknowledged the issue to Bloomberg and said corrective steps have been taken, including working with the affiliate network Impact.com to reverse improperly attributed transactions and refund affected brands. Phia has also been temporarily suspended from Impact.com’s marketplace while the situation is addressed. Despite the public acknowledgment from the company, Gates and Kianni themselves have not personally addressed the controversy on their own platforms, even though both are active users of social media and co-host a podcast together called “The Burnouts.”
Industry observers say the fallout could be significant. Jordan Williams, chief executive of the attribution-fraud prevention firm Veeper, told Business Insider that episodes like this can seriously undermine a company’s standing with partners, noting he has fielded a surge of inquiries from brands and agencies since the story broke.
This is not the first controversy to hit the startup. In November 2025, Fortune reported that cybersecurity researchers found Phia’s browser extension was transmitting snapshots of nearly every webpage a user visited including sensitive pages like bank statements and private email back to the company’s servers, even when the app wasn’t actively in use.
Phia, whose name blends its founders’ own, was co-founded by Gates, daughter of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and Kianni, a climate activist and former youth adviser to the United Nations. The two met as roommates at Stanford University before launching the company together in 2025.
