Phoebe Gates, the 23-year-old daughter of billionaires Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates, has spent the last year insisting her shopping app Phia would succeed with, quote, 'no ties to my privilege or my last name'. And it seemed to be working: Phia raised $43.5 million from investors including Khloe Kardashian, Paris Hilton and Sydney Sweeney, and hit a $185 million valuation in less than two years. Then on the 9th of July 2026, a Bloomberg investigation alleged the app had been faking how well it was doing with a sneaky trick called 'cookie stuffing', possibly defrauding investors and affiliate partners out of tens of millions of dollars. It's so serious that the last people caught doing it were prosecuted by the FBI and went to federal prison. This is Just The Gist (MINI!) of Phia, Phoebe Gates and the fake clicks scandal: the Bloomberg cookie stuffing investigation, the celebrity investors, and the self-made girlboss story that may be unravelling in real time.

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Gates Heir's Shopping App Took Credit for Sales It Didn't Drive (Bloomberg, 2026)

Forced Clicks and Stand-Down Violations by Shopping Plugin Phia (BenEdelman.org, 2026)

Affiliate Fraud Litigation Index (BenEdelman.org, 2026)

The Phia Controversy Explained: How Phoebe Gates Can Recover From a Major PR Crisis (Your PR BFF on Substack, 2026)

Phia Accused of Cookie Stuffing, Taking Affiliate Credit on Purchases It Didn't Earn (TechCrunch, 2026)

Q&A: Sophia Kianni and Phoebe Gates Reflect on Their Time at Stanford and Co-Founding Phia (The Stanford Daily, 2025)

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