Bill Gates 23-year-old daughter, Phoebe Gates, is facing serious allegations that her multibillion-dollar digital coupon startup, Phia, engaged in cookie stuffing to siphon commissions from online retailers.
Phia, a browser extension marketed as a way for consumers to automatically find discount codes and secure the lowest prices at checkout, operates by dropping a tracking cookie when a shopper completes a purchase, signaling that Phia deserves a commission for driving the sale. According to the Daily Caller, a July 2026 Bloomberg investigation contends that this seemingly benign model was allegedly manipulated by Phias leadership to claim credit for transactions the company did not actually generate.
The Bloomberg report alleged that Phia co-founders Phoebe Gates and climate activist Sophia Kianni knowingly pushed for software features that falsely attributed sales to Phia, a practice that can fall under federal fraud statutes and carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. Phia reportedly generated $30 million in 2025, drawing high-profile backing from celebrities such as Hailey Bieber and Kris Jenner, and allegedly claimed commissions on purchases from major brands including Nike, Nordstrom, and Gap.
Investigators further alleged that once the suspected cookie-stuffing features were exposed in July, Phia quietly disabled them and saw its daily revenue collapse from roughly $80,000 to between $10,000 and $28,000. Bloomberg claimed to possess internal Slack messages and accounts from individuals close to the company indicating that Gates and Kianni had known about the practice for at least seven months, despite their public insistence that they had only learned of the issue within the last 24 hours, according to the Bloomberg report.
Gates and Kianni have maintained that they are addressing the problem and moving to clean up the platform. A Phia spokesperson told The New York Post: Any features causing misattributions were immediately removed over a month ago on July 7. 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.
Bloombergs reporting also cited a December 18 Slack message allegedly written by Gates that read, worried this is an issue across the boardcan u confirm auto pop for cookie drop is live on ALL sites w a coupon to confirm we are monetizing on all gmv. The outlet further claimed that Kianni suggested dropping a cookie every time a user closed a Phia pop-up, a move that would maximize commissions regardless of whether Phia actually influenced the sale.
A Phia spokesperson has flatly denied Bloombergs allegations, signaling that the company is preparing to fight back against what it portrays as an inaccurate narrative. Yet the controversy underscores growing concerns among conservatives about unaccountable Big Tech elites, often shielded by inherited wealth and cultural influence, leveraging opaque algorithms to enrich themselves at the expense of ordinary consumers and businesses.
Legal experts warn that the stakes are far from trivial in President Trumps second term, as his Justice Department has signaled a tougher posture toward tech-related fraud and corporate misconduct. Ariel Givner, founder at Givner Law, cautioned on X that cookie stuffing is typically treated as federal wire fraud in US courts, adding, Theres a possibility of a max penalty of up to 20 years prison + fines/restitution, a reminder that even the most well-connected tech darlings are not supposed to be above the law.
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