Phoebe Gates‘ company Phia is addressing concerns.
The AI shopping start-up co-founded by Bill Gates and Melinda Gates‘ daughter, along with her Stanford roommate Sophia Kianni, announced that it has resolved a bug in its code that previously allowed it to claim commissions for online sales without any involvement.
“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 informed Bloomberg in a statement, adding that the company ensures compliance and undergoes regular audits. “Our team worked overnight to identify, mitigate, and has since resolved the issue.”
The error was initially revealed in a report by Bloomberg, which indicated that an independent researcher, Ben Edelman, along with Capital One Shopping and the outlet itself, conducted a review of Phia’s code across 50 websites and confirmed the presence of unearned commissions.
According to the report, the affiliate marketing company’s browser extension—designed to assist online shoppers in finding products at the lowest available price—would insert its own affiliate code during checkout at third-party retailers, enabling Phia to claim commissions on sales it did not facilitate.
