Billionaire's daughter Phoebe Gates faces allegations over Phia fashion app

The shopping app Phia co-founded by Bill Gates' daughter Phoebe Gates and her Stanford roommate Sophia Kianni, has issued a statement confirming it has fixed a “bug” in its code that reportedly allowed it to claim commissions for online sales that it did not earn itself, reports Bloomberg.

 "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 said, adding that the company is regularly audited. 

“Our team worked overnight to identify, mitigate, and has since resolved the issue."

 

 

 

 

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Phia aims to help online shoppers find products at the lowest available price.

The “bug” in the app was first uncovered in a report by Bloomberg, which shared that a review of Phia's code was done by independent researcher Ben Edelman, Capital One Shopping.

The report found that because of the glitch, the company would insert its own affiliate code while users would check out at third party retailers, thereby giving Phia a commission on sales it didn't earn. 

Edelman said he did not believe the settings were accidental.

After Phia said it had rectified the issue, Bloomberg reported that it retested Phia's browser extension and confirmed the issue to be fixed.

 

 

 

 

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Phia was founded in 2025, after raising an estimated $US43.5 million in funding. Investors included Kim Kardashian, Karlie Kloss and Hailey Bieber. The company has now been valued at $US185 million. 

"If the business is successful, people will say, 'It's because of her family'," Phoebe told The New York Times. 

“And a huge portion of that is true. I never would have been able to go to Stanford, or have such an amazing upbringing, or feel the drive to do something, if it wasn't for my parents.” 

In a February 2026 episode of Yahoo!'s Opening Bid Unfiltered podcast, she further explained: "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."