Phia suspended from affiliate platform over cookie stuffing claims

Phia, a shopping startup co-founded by Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, has been suspended from Impact.com, an affiliate and influencer platform, following a Bloomberg investigation. According to Bloomberg, Phia was accused of a practice known as “cookie stuffing,” which may have helped the product receive commissions and credit for sales it did not actually generate. Cookie stuffing refers to injecting affiliate tracking cookies into a browser to claim commissions the injecting party did not actually earn.

Founded in 2025, Phia has raised more than $40 million in funding from a roster of high-profile investors, including Khloé Kardashian and Hailey Bieber. The startup built a browser extension that functions somewhat like a flight-comparison tool, but for retail: it helps shoppers find the lowest price for an item across sites and surfaces discount codes. Phia earns a commission on purchases made through the platform — a standard industry practice known as affiliate marketing, where a platform takes a cut of referred sales.

The Bloomberg investigation, along with findings from an independent consultant and a competitor, found that when a user shopped at an online retailer — even if they arrived on their own or through another affiliate program such as Wirecutter — Phia would open a new tab in the background. During checkout, Phia allegedly overrode the referral codes belonging to other affiliates and inserted its own, letting it take credit for, and potentially collect a commission on, a sale it did not generate.

Phia has said the technical issue has been fixed. According to Bloomberg, once the issue was flagged, a Phia spokesperson said all necessary changes had been made, and a subsequent check by Bloomberg found the issue had been resolved. It remains unclear whether that fix will satisfy the retailers and affiliate partners Phia works with, or whether Impact.com will lift the suspension. Cookie stuffing has previously drawn legal action against other startups: Honey, owned by PayPal, remains the subject of an ongoing class action lawsuit over similar allegations.

Why it matters

The episode underscores the reputational and operational risk facing consumer startups that rely on affiliate marketing, where technical workarounds to capture commissions can trigger platform suspensions and invite legal action even after a fix is deployed.