Phoebe Gates' Shopping Start-Up Phia Speaks Out Amid Sales Controversy
Phia, the online shopping startup cofounded by Bill Gates and Melinda Gates' daughter Phoebe Gates, 23, said that it had fixed an error in its code that gave it commissions on sales it didn't drive.
By Gibson Johns Jul 13, 2026 4:32 PM | Updated 2 hours ago
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Phoebe Gates' company Phia is speaking out.
The AI shopping start-up co-founded by Bill Gates and Melinda Gates' daughter and her Stanford roommate Sophia Kianni said that it had fixed a bug in its code that reportedly allowed it to claim commissions for online sales that it had no hand in.
"Within the last 24 hours, we were made aware that in a recent release our codebase was causing misattributions from a subset of users,” a Phia spokesperson told Bloomberg in a statement adding that the company maintains compliance and is regularly audited. “Our team worked overnight to identify, mitigate, and has since resolved the issue."
The error was first uncovered in a report by Bloomberg, which said that a review of Phia's code by an independent researcher Ben Edelman, Capital One Shopping and the outlet itself across 50 websites proved the existence of the unearned commissions.
According to the report, the affiliate marketing company's browser extension—which aims to help online shoppers find products at the lowest available price—would insert its own affiliate code while users would check out at third party retailers, allowing Phia to claim commissions on sales it didn't drive.
Bloomberg added that it retested Phia's browser extension after the company confirmed the bug had been fixed, and found that the misattribution had indeed stopped.
E! News has reached out to Phoebe's rep for comment and hasn't heard back.
Theo Wargo/Getty Images
Phoebe had previously explained that one of the reasons she wanted to start Phia—which has raised $43 million from celebrity investors like Kim Kardashian, Karlie Kloss and Hailey Bieber—was to make a name for herself regardless of who her parents are.
"My primary motivation is I have a chip on my shoulder to build something generational that has no ties to my privilege or my last name," she said in a February 2026 episode of Yahoo!'s Opening Bid Unfiltered podcast. "That's truly an excellent experience for consumers where you want to come to."
Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for TIME
That being said, the 23-year-old has certainly learned a lot from her billionaire parents.
As she explained, "I think really from both of them, both my mom, with her management experience, and my dad's experience at Microsoft, I learned a lot about team management over time."
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