Phoebe Gates' FIA Platform Accused of Cookie Stuffing and Fraud

Phoebe Gates, daughter of Bill Gates, launched a shopping platform called FIA with her Stanford roommate Sophia Keani. Initially, FIA was pitched as a free AI-powered shopping tool designed to compare prices and prevent overpaying. Launched in April 2025, it quickly gained traction, raising $43.5 million, accumulating half a million downloads, and being recognized by Time magazine as the best invention of 2025. By early 2026, its valuation soared to $185 million, seemingly validating Phoebe's efforts to build something independently.

The Unraveling: Allegations of Cookie Stuffing

However, in July 2026, Bloomberg conducted an investigation into FIA's browser extensions across over 50 websites. The findings suggested potentially illegal activities. Bloomberg discovered that if the FIA extension was installed on a mobile browser, it would automatically trigger a background click the moment a user added an item to their shopping cart on partnered sites. This allowed FIA to claim credit and earn commissions for sales it did not genuinely facilitate, even if the user never directly interacted with the app or extension.

This practice is known as "cookie stuffing." When a user makes an online purchase, retailers typically pay a commission to the referrer (e.g., a coupon site or influencer) who directed the customer to their site. This referral is tracked via a cookie placed in the user's browser. Cookie stuffing involves an external company placing its cookie in a user's browser without the user clicking their referral link, thereby taking credit and commission for sales they did not generate. This also means the legitimate referrer loses out on their commission.

Internal Mechanisms and Bloomberg's Investigation

Bloomberg's investigation, supported by Ben Elderman, a respected researcher in affiliate marketing fraud, and an analysis by a competing tool called Capital One Shopping, identified three specific features in FIA's extension responsible for this behavior:

1. Hidden Background Tab: During checkout, a hidden background tab would open, injecting FIA's referral code and overriding any existing referrer.
2. Click-Triggered Cookie: A cookie was triggered whenever a user clicked anywhere on a page after FIA's pop-up appeared, even if they were trying to close the pop-up.
3. Passive Trigger: This feature refreshed FIA's cookie every two hours on any active site, overwriting any other affiliate's referral.

Upon being contacted by Bloomberg on July 7th, FIA immediately disabled these features, claiming they had only become aware of the "coding error" within the last 24 hours and had worked overnight to fix it. Impact.com, an affiliate network, suspended FIA from its marketplace following these revelations.

Damaging Revelations and Internal Communications

A month later, on August 11th, Bloomberg published a follow-up investigation that proved more damaging. They obtained a screenshot of an internal dashboard showing that what FIA called a "bug" was actually a named feature: "enable coupon autodrop." This feature had a toggle that could be remotely switched on and off. It was activated on December 10th, 2025, and remained active for 209 days, only being switched off on July 7th, 2026, the same day Bloomberg first contacted the company. This meant the feature was active throughout the holiday shopping season, a $35 million fundraising round, and months of reported revenue growth.

Internal Slack messages, shared anonymously with Bloomberg, further implicated the founders. On December 18th, Phoebe Gates reportedly messaged her technical team, expressing concern about insufficient commissions from Etsy and asking for confirmation that "Auto Pop for Cookie Drop is live on all sites with a coupon to confirm we are monetizing on all GMV." She followed up by stating, "regardless, we should capture every transaction if the cookie drop was working."

Sophia Keani was also reportedly pushing for another cookie feature, and when an engineer warned it would violate Google Chrome's extension policy, Keani suggested reframing it and dealing with complications later. The engineer noted that the passive trigger was already refreshing cookies every two hours, and Keani encouraged the team to continue dropping cookies regardless.

After these features were disabled on July 7th, FIA's average daily revenue plummeted from approximately $80,000 to between $10,000 and $28,000, indicating that cookie stuffing accounted for a significant portion of their income. A FIA data scientist estimated that cookie stuffing contributed to roughly 51% of the merchandise value the company claimed credit for in June, a figure FIA disputed.

Legal Ramifications and Precedents

FIA issued a statement acknowledging the removal of the features, promising to reverse transactions, and announcing the hiring of a head of compliance. However, they did not address the internal Slack messages.

While no official charges have been filed against Phoebe Gates or Sophia Keani, corporate attorney Ariel Giver noted that cookie stuffing typically constitutes federal wire fraud in US courts, carrying a maximum penalty of up to 20 years in prison. However, experts doubt such a severe outcome, as prosecutors would need to prove deliberate intent to defraud rather than mere corporate oversight. The Slack communications, if true, could be problematic for the defense.

Cookie stuffing has a legal precedent. In 2014, Shan Hogan, who ran one of eBay's largest affiliate programs, pleaded guilty to wire fraud for similar actions and received five months in federal prison and a $25,000 fine. His associate, Brian Dunning, received 15 months.

Another relevant case involves Honey, a browser extension acquired by PayPal for $4 billion, which is currently facing a federal class-action lawsuit for similar conduct, including hidden tab techniques and cookie overrides. The Honey case is currently in the discovery process.

Phoebe Gates, who sought to build something independent of her family name, now faces significant challenges. The narrative she carefully constructed has been severely damaged, and the pressure for growth appears to have led to questionable practices. The outcome, whether a lawsuit, settlement, or other consequences, remains to be seen.