Phoebe Gates’ AI shopping app Phia reportedly claims unprofitable affiliate sales through fake clicks

According to multiple reports, AI-powered shopping plugin Phia used a tactic known as cookie stuffing to attach its affiliate code to sales it didn’t actually drive. Phia, which launched last spring, was co-founded by Phoebe Gates — the daughter of Bill Gates — and Sophia Kiani. Research by researcher Ben Edelman, Bloomberg and Capital One Shopping all reported finding instances of the browser extension soliciting referrals through fake clicks and even taking credit for sales that other publishers should have received the commission for.

Edelman posted a detailed breakdown of how this works, along with a video showing « Phia’s affiliate link invisibly loaded into a second tab » on iOS after visiting a merchant’s website. It’s worth a read.

Phia blamed the problems highlighted in the investigations on a mistake. In a statement to BloombergA company spokesperson said: « In the last 24 hours, we were notified that in a recent release, our codebase was causing incorrect attribution by a subset of users. As soon as we were notified, our team worked through the night to identify, mitigate, and have since resolved the issue. » The feature that made all of this possible was introduced in December 2025, Edelman and Bloomberg both reported.