As a Full Stack Engineering Intern at Phia, you will help build and ship product features that power our creator and brand ecosystem. You will work across the stack to develop user-facing experiences, support product data systems, and improve the internal tools that enable content publishing and performance insights. Partnering closely with engineers, product managers, and designers, you will contribute to real projects that directly impact our community. This internship offers hands-on experience building scalable systems in a fast-moving startup environment while learning engineering best practices from a high-performing team.
Phia has raised $43M from Notable Capital, Khosla Ventures, and Kleiner Perkins, with backing from founders and operators like Vlad Tenev (Robinhood), Mellody Hobson (Ariel Investments), Naomi Gleit (Meta), and Mati Staniszewski (ElevenLabs), plus a roster of cultural leaders, to build the AI alignment layer for commerce. In just over a year, Phia's consumer shopping agent has surpassed 1.5 million users and partnered with 9,600+ retail brands across contemporary, resale, and luxury, representing billions in annual gross merchandise volume. We scan more than 350 million products to help shoppers find the right pieces at the best price, cutting return rates by 50%, and we're on pace for nine-figure sales growth this year.
In an era where AI vertical agents are reshaping every industry, commerce is on the verge of a complete transformation. Phia is reinventing shopping from a fragmented, impersonal experience into one that feels intelligent, trusted, and built around each user's intent. This foundation of trust is our wedge to become the end-to-end shopping destination for the next generation of buyers.
Phia is a lean, high-ownership team building at startup speed. If you want to ship at high velocity and solve complex problems in consumer AI and commerce, this is the place to do it.
Contribute to frontend and backend features for user-facing products
Support the development of APIs and data flows that power content publishing, product data, and analytics workflows
Partner with designers, product managers, and engineers to ship end-to-end features
Learn and apply best practices for building scalable and maintainable software in a production environment
Currently pursuing a degree in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
Experience through coursework, internships, or personal projects building web applications
Proficiency in JavaScript and experience with at least one frontend and one backend framework
Foundational understanding of APIs, databases, and web application architecture
Familiarity with Git, testing practices, and modern development workflows
Strong problem-solving skills, curiosity, and ability to learn quickly in a fast-paced startup environment
Clear communicator who enjoys collaborating and taking ownership of their work
Phia is an AI-powered shopping assistant that helps online shoppers compare fashion prices across new and secondhand items from over 40,000 retailers and resale sites using a free iOS app and browser extension. It analyzes items to give real-time price signals (fair, high, or typical), flags price drops, and shows lower-priced alternatives, earning affiliate revenue when users purchase via partner links. Phia differentiates itself with a massive secondhand catalog (over 300 million items) and partnerships with more than 5,000 brands and 150 resale marketplaces, plus resale-value insights to guide decisions. Its goal is to make fashion shopping cheaper and more transparent while promoting sustainable, circular commerce by encouraging secondhand purchases.
Company Size
51-200
Company Stage
Series A
Total Funding
$74M
Headquarters
New York City, New York
Founded
2025
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Phoebe Gates, daughter of Bill and Melinda French Gates, attended a secretive Stanford course called "So You Think You Can Rule the World?" whilst studying human biology. The unofficial 10-week class, taught by 2020 graduate Justin Lewis-Weber, admitted only 12 students per quarter by referral and taught strategies to manipulate power structures. Gates reportedly used the course's network to recruit employees for her AI shopping assistant startup Phia, which she cofounded with roommate Sophia Kianni in 2025. The company raised over $43 million and is valued at approximately $185 million. Phia now faces cookie stuffing accusations—an illegal practice that reportedly accounted for over half its June revenue. Internal Slack messages suggest the founders knew about the fraud as early as December, contradicting the company's claim it only discovered the issue in July.
Phoebe Gates' Phia faces scrutiny over affiliate commissions and technical oversight. Phia, the AI shopping browser extension co-founded by Sophia Kianni along with Phoebe Gates, daughter of Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates, is facing scrutiny over how its technology handled affiliate sales. Questions about Phoebe's technical background have sparked controversy, but the more consequential issues concern Phia's software and its sales attribution system. Launched as an AI shopping assistant, Phia helps consumers find lower prices online, and the company has advertised its ability to search more than 220,000 websites. Reports in recent months have raised questions about whether the company's software improperly claimed credit for sales generated through other affiliates. If so, Phia could have received commissions on transactions it did not drive. The controversy has developed alongside questions about Gates' education and computer science experience. A Page Six report published Aug. 14 cited a Stanford University classmate who questioned Gates' technical background and said she did not take advanced coding courses at Stanford. Gates graduated from Stanford in 2024 with a bachelor's degree in human biology after completing the degree in three years. Stanford describes human biology as an interdisciplinary program that can include coursework in areas such as natural sciences, mathematics, computer science and engineering. However, which courses a student takes depend on their individual academic plans. The fact that Gates did not take advanced computer science courses, however, does not by itself establish whether she has the technical skills needed to help run a technology company. Startup founders also do not necessarily need to be advanced programmers. Technology companies are commonly built by teams in which founders bring expertise in areas such as business, product development, research or marketing while engineers develop and maintain the software. That makes the affiliate controversy more important than the question of how much code Gates has written. How Phia's affiliate system came under scrutiny. In July 2026, the Phia app was accused of fraudulently and deceptively taking commission for fake clicks and sales it did not drive (a practice known as "cookie stuffing") and was suspended from the leading affiliate and influencer platform Impact.com. An investigation by Bloomberg News, alongside findings from independent consultant Ben Edelman, found that Phia would secretly open a new tab in the background whenever a user shopped at an online retailer, even if the user arrived directly or through another affiliate program. Subscribing To Digital Newspaper Outlets Discover more Subscribing To International News Magazines Subscribing To Digital Newspaper Outlets Edelman's analysis specifically identified this behavior in the iPhone version of the service, noting this feature was present in a release dated December 13, 2025. He also provided evidence of the same practice continuing in later versions. He rejected Phia leadership's claim that this was a "bug," stating that the deliberate creation and deployment of a feature called "auto_drop" for automatically setting affiliate tracking "cannot be dismissed as a mere bug. It's intentional, and it violates both trust and contract. Those findings came from Edelman's own testing, technical analysis and code review. In August 2026, Bloomberg further reported, citing leaked Slack messages and people familiar with the matter, that co-founders Gates and Kianni had been aware of the cookie-stuffing practice since at least December 2025 and had discussed it with executives and engineers. Investors have put substantial money into Phia. The controversy comes as Phia has attracted significant investor attention. Fortune reported that the company had raised about $43.5 million in total funding by 2026 and was valued at approximately $185 million. In May, its most recent financing round reportedly brought in about $35.5 million. Affiliate revenue is particularly relevant to Phia because commissions from purchases are an important part of its business model. If transactions were incorrectly attributed, the financial impact could extend beyond individual commissions and raise questions about the reliability of the company's revenue reporting. Reports have cited different figures for Phia's daily revenue and the financial impact of the disputed attribution system; these figures vary and should not be treated as definitive measures of revenue or losses without supporting documentation. Phia has said it is reviewing transactions with affected brands and working to correct improperly attributed commissions. The company has also said it plans to appoint a chief compliance officer to strengthen oversight. What the legal questions do and do not show. The controversy has prompted discussion of possible violations of U.S. federal fraud laws, including the federal wire fraud statute, Section 1343 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code. The statute provides for penalties of up to 20 years in prison in qualifying cases. That does not mean Phia's conduct has been established as wire fraud. A criminal wire fraud prosecution generally requires proof of specific elements, including a fraudulent scheme and knowing and intentional participation in that scheme. A software error does not, on its own, establish criminal intent. For that reason, the allegations reported so far are not enough to conclude that Gates or Kianni face a potential 20-year prison sentence. The legal question would turn on evidence about what happened, who knew about it, when they knew, and what they did in response. Those are questions that cannot be answered simply by pointing to the software's behavior alone. Gates' family name adds another dimension. As the daughter of Bill Gates, one of the world's best-known technology entrepreneurs, and Melinda French Gates, a prominent philanthropist, she entered the startup world with a level of public attention that few founders experience. In an interview with Fortune, Gates said she wanted to build Phia independently of her family's name and influence. She also said her parents did not invest in the company. That background does not establish anything about Phia's technology or business practices. It does, however, help explain why questions about the startup and its founder have attracted unusually broad attention. The focus on Gates' computer science coursework may be more publicly visible than the technical dispute itself. Yet the more consequential questions are about how Phia's affiliate system was designed, tested, and monitored. The questions that matter most. The central issue is not whether Gates could personally build Phia's software from scratch. It is whether the company had adequate controls around a system that could affect how affiliate sales were credited. That includes how the technology was tested, how attribution was monitored, and what safeguards were in place to prevent Phia from receiving credit for a sale generated by another publisher or affiliate. The timing of the company's knowledge also matters. If internal records show that employees identified the behavior months before it became public, investigators and business partners could reasonably ask how the issue was handled during that period. Those questions will require evidence. Technical testing can establish what the software did, transaction records can show how sales were attributed, and internal communications can help establish what employees knew and when. Regulatory or legal proceedings, if any, could provide a separate assessment of whether the conduct violated applicable law. The available information does not establish that Gates lacked the technical ability to lead a technology startup, nor does it establish that Phia's affiliate system amounted to criminal fraud. It does, however, show why the company is facing scrutiny. For Phia, the important test is whether it can account for how its technology attributed sales, explain when the disputed behavior was identified, and demonstrate that its affiliate practices can be independently examined and verified. Labels:
Bill Gates' daughter took secret classes on controlling humanity. August 13, 2026 - 12:54 pm - Advertisement - Globalist billionaire Bill Gates's 23-year-old daughter Phoebe attended a secretive, off-the-books Stanford University course that taught a handpicked group of ultra-privileged elite students how to manipulate and control society. The classes guided students on how to navigate power structures, exploit bureaucratic weaknesses, steer public opinion, and get what they want from institutions. The invitation-only course, titled "So You Think You Can Rule the World?" was never publicly advertised. It was unavailable to ordinary Stanford students without a referral. - Advertisement - Details of Gates's participation have resurfaced as her startup, Phia, faces a major scandal over internal Slack messages showing that Gates and co-founder Sophia Kianni knew the company was using a controversial affiliate marketing practice known as "cookie stuffing." The revelations raise fresh questions about how Gates approached power, business, and ethics after attending a class explicitly designed around understanding and exploiting institutional systems. Secret Class Taught Students to Exploit Power Structures The Stanford course consisted of just 12 students who met once a week during the winter quarter. - Advertisement - Silicon Valley investor and Stanford graduate Justin Lewis-Weber taught the program, which participants simply referred to as "Rule." One former student said Lewis-Weber sought to assemble "like-minded folks who dared to dream bigger together." Another student described the course in far more revealing terms. The goal, the student said, was learning "how to essentially hack any kind of power structure or bureaucratic structure and get what they want in a system of people." - Advertisement - "It's more about identifying the vulnerabilities or loopholes," the student added. "I think he's less concerned with the ethics of it all and the problem-solving elements." Another participant described the class as focused on the "cynical parts of Silicon Valley." The student characterized Lewis-Weber as "power hungry, intellectual, but really focused on profit and power instead of doing good." The course was never part of Stanford's publicly available curriculum and required students to gain admission through personal referrals. Gates Used Secret Class to Recruit for Phia The course was also connected directly to Phoebe Gates's business ambitions. - Advertisement - According to the Stanford Daily, another student said Gates used the class to recruit workers for Phia. Phia is a browser extension marketed as a "personal shopping assistant" that helps consumers find clothing deals and earns commissions when users purchase items through affiliate links. But Bloomberg later found that the extension was claiming commissions on sales it had not actually generated, as Slay News reported earlier. The company's software automatically dropped affiliate tracking cookies and, in some cases, overrode legitimate referrals. - Advertisement - Discover more Internal Slack messages obtained by Bloomberg showed that Gates knew about the practice months before the company publicly blamed the problem on "technical anomalies." Gates told employees that "we should capture every transaction." Kianni likewise urged engineers to "keep these cookies dropping" even after concerns were raised about compliance. Cookie Stuffing Accounted for Massive Share of Revenue The controversial practice reportedly accounted for more than half of Phia's claimed sales in June. Bloomberg estimated that cookie stuffing represented approximately 51 percent of the company's sales attribution during that month. When Bloomberg first confronted Phia, the company said the issue had been fixed within 24 hours. However, the newly surfaced Slack messages showed that Gates and Kianni were aware of the system well before the investigation. Corporate attorney Ariel Givner has warned that cookie stuffing has previously been treated as federal wire fraud in U.S. courts. Givner said the conduct can carry a "max penalty of up to 20 years' prison" along with fines and restitution. No criminal charges have been filed against Gates. 'Rule the World' Course Takes on New Significance Gates has repeatedly tried to separate herself from the enormous wealth and influence of her billionaire father, insisting that Phia would succeed with "no ties to my privilege or my last name." - Advertisement - Her attendance at a secret Stanford course teaching students how to exploit institutional weaknesses now casts that claim in a very different light. The class was not built around ordinary entrepreneurship. Participants described it as a program for learning how to identify loopholes, manipulate bureaucratic systems, and obtain desired outcomes from structures of power. And Gates did not merely attend. She used the class to recruit for the very company now under scrutiny over a business practice that allegedly exploited weaknesses in affiliate marketing systems. For a startup founder who insists she built her success independently, the combination of elite access, a secret power-focused Stanford course, and internal messages about keeping controversial revenue-generating practices alive paints a striking picture. All Motor News - Advertisement -
Phia's privacy scandal: AI shopping tool exposed user data (2026). A popular AI shopping assistant, Phia, has been exposed for its invasive data collection practices, sparking a privacy scandal. But here's where it gets controversial: the company, co-founded by Bill Gates' daughter, Phoebe Gates, was quietly gathering more than just fashion preferences. Security researchers reveal a shocking breach of trust. The browser extension, designed to simplify price comparisons, was found to capture a staggering amount of user data. In an older version, it transmitted snapshots of every web page visited, including sensitive sites like banks and private emails, even when users weren't shopping. This raises the question: is any online activity truly private? Phia, fresh from an $8 million seed round backed by Silicon Valley's elite, was named one of TIME's Best Inventions of 2025. But this success story has a dark twist. An ex-Meta engineer, Maahir Sharma, discovered the extension's intrusive behavior, noticing excessive data requests while testing on Amazon. And this is the part most people miss: it wasn't just retail data being collected. Sharma found that the extension logged every URL visited, a potential goldmine for reconstructing browsing histories. It went further, secretly copying entire web pages and sending them to Phia's servers. This hidden function, 'logCompleteHTMLtoGCS,' was a privacy nightmare, replicating and packaging every page a user loaded without their knowledge or consent. Upon testing with a digital bank, Sharma was shocked to find this activity logged as well. His findings were independently verified, and Phia removed the feature after being contacted. However, they didn't disclose the privacy violation or the fate of the transmitted data. Experts argue that these practices violate Phia's own privacy policy and may breach regulations like GDPR. The company claims it only logs URLs anonymously, but researchers counter that even URLs can carry sensitive data. The debate rages on: is Phia's data collection ethical, and are users truly informed? The controversy highlights the risks of rapid AI development. 'Vibe-coding' and AI browsers are accelerating software creation, but at what cost? As AI assistants become ubiquitous, are we sacrificing security and privacy? Share your thoughts: is the convenience worth the potential dangers? References. Top Articles Article information Last Updated: 2026-08-13T15:39:13+07:00 Views: 6295 Rating: 4.3 / 5 (44 voted) Name: Aracelis Kilback Birthday: 1994-11-22 Address: Apt. 895 30151 Green Plain, Lake Mariela, RI 98141 Phone: +5992291857476 Job: Legal Officer Hobby: LARPing, role-playing games, Slacklining, Reading, Inline skating, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Dance Introduction: My name is Aracelis Kilback, I am a nice, gentle, agreeable, joyous, attractive, combative, gifted person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
Bill Gates' daughter knew for months that her app claimed sales it didn't drive, report claims. "whatever we can do to keep these cookies dropping will be amazing thank you," Gates' co-founder allegedly texted an engineer. By Ece Yildirim Published August 12, 2026, 6:34 pm ET Reading time 3 minutes A Bloomberg investigation published last month claimed that Phia, a shopping startup co-founded by billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates' daughter Phoebe Gates and her Stanford roommate Sophia Kianni, had been engaging in a shady online practice. The report alleged that the startup's web extension, which purports to find cheaper deals and discount codes for online shoppers, had been falsely claiming sales it did not actually drive via a practice called cookie stuffing, which violates digital platforms' policies. The startup makes money by collecting a commission from retailers for every sale that it facilitates, which it verifies by dropping a cookie on the shopper's browser every time a purchase intentionally involves their extension. Independent testing by Bloomberg, researcher Ben Edelman, and rival company Capital One Shopping claims to have found that Phia's app secretly opens a background tab to inject its own affiliate code, overriding other referrals to get the commission. Similar accusations also befell PayPal-owned Honey back in 2024, leading to a class-action lawsuit. On July 8th, Phia representatives characterized the incident as a software bug and told Bloomberg that the team had just been made aware of the issue and that it was immediately resolved "within the last 24 hours." But now, a new investigation by Bloomberg alleges that Phia executives, and specifically Phoebe Gates, were not just well aware of the situation at least seven months before the publication of the report, but also allegedly actively pushed for the inclusion of the features. Bloomberg is reporting that the issue was not due to a bug but an actual controllable feature named "enable coupon auto drop" on the internal dashboard. Citing internal Slack chats and anonymous sources, Bloomberg claims that Gates had a Slack conversation with some staffers in December and allegedly wanted to verify that Phia was dropping cookies on all websites, even if the shopper did not end up using their coupon. The report also claims that Phia employed other controversial practices, namely one feature that included dropping a cookie automatically every two hours if a user had ever interacted with Phia's extension on a "top 1000 website." The other alleged controversial practice involved dropping cookies if the shopper clicked literally anywhere after Phia's pop-up appeared on the page, even if that click was just the user trying to close the pop-up box. According to the internal communications as presented by Bloomberg, an engineer tried to tell co-founder Kianni that the practice could be "against compliance," but Kianni allegedly responded with a Slack message that said, "I guess we could say that the user is trying to open us and roll it back if they complain." The engineer then allegedly responded by saying they didn't need to implement this feature because the existing feature dropping cookies automatically every two hours was already "working pretty good," to which Kianni reportedly replied with "That makes sense yeah I just whatever we can do to keep these cookies dropping will be amazing thank you." The report also claims that after the "coupon auto drop" feature was disabled last month, Phia's revenue plunged from $80,000 to between $10,000 and $28,000, citing an internal revenue chart. Phia denied the allegations to Bloomberg, including that the revenue decline they suffered last month was solely due to the reversal of cookie stuffing. They also reportedly said that the company would hire a head of compliance "to make sure something like this never happens again." The Bloomberg allegations dropped smack dab in the middle of Phia's meteoric success story. The startup and its co-founders had swiftly generated intense hype online after the company's founding, raising more than $40 million from notable venture capital firms and famous names like Khloe Kardashian, Sydney Sweeney, Hailey Bieber and girlboss/Meta's former COO Sheryl Sandberg. Gates and Kianni also both made the Forbes 30 under 30 list earlier this year, which the internet likes to jokingly refer to as a curse considering that a comical number of its honorees have later been accused of fraud. If the Bloomberg reports are accurate, then the curse might have claimed yet another set of eager entrepreneurs as victims.