Ultra-privileged Phoebe Gates tried to game the system but ended up in big trouble — right here’s why she did it | Latest Tech News
Under fire Phoebe Gates once belonged to a secretive, invitation-only Stanford class called “So You Think You Can Rule the World?” where college students are “taught how to identify vulnerabilities in systems of power,” The Post can reveal.
Years before her procuring startup, Phia, was hit by allegations it exploited unlawful loopholes, billionaire Bill Gates’ daughter, now 23, was among a hand-picked group of Stanford college students in a secret society who research how energy works — and, according to one former scholar, how to “hack” it.
The unofficial 10-week course, nicknamed “Rule,” isn’t publicized, has no enrollment code and accepts just 12 college students — six males and six girls — at a time. They meet weekly to debate money, energy and “the underlying incentive structures and frameworks that govern how the world works,” according to The Stanford Daily.
Phoebe Gates attends The Business of Fashion Presents VOICES 2025 Gala Dinner and Party at Soho Farmhouse on Thursday, November 20, 2025, in Chipping Norton, England. Getty Images for Business of Fashion
Getting in requires a referral from a former scholar and an intense interview course of. Candidates are requested to suggest their most completed male and feminine friends, while founder and teacher Justin Lewis-Weber — who personally selects the ultimate dozen — grills candidates about their ambitions and beliefs.
One former scholar told the Stanford Daily the purpose was to train college students “how to essentially hack any kind of power structure or bureaucratic structure and get what they want in a system of people.”
Another described Lewis-Weber’s entrepreneurial philosophy as “hackier” and “more opportunistic.”
“It’s more about identifying the vulnerabilities or loopholes,” the former scholar claimed. “I think he’s less concerned with the ethics of it all and the problem-solving elements.”
Both Gates and Lewis-Weber did not reply to The Post’s request for remark.
There is no evidence the class had something to do with Phia’s alleged dodgy affiliate practices. But Gates didn’t depart the Rule community behind at Stanford.
Former Rule college students regularly go into business together, and Gates has recruited for Phia through the class, according to a scholar interviewed by the Stanford Daily — however, her Stanford pal and Phia co-founder, Sophia Kianni, was not a member of the group.
Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, co-founders of the digital fashion platform Phia, on Monday, April 21, 2025. Brian Zak/NY Post
The classes Gates absorbed at Stanford have this week gained an fascinating new perspective.
Phia — the AI-powered procuring startup Gates and Kianni launched in 2025 — is embroiled in a scandal over allegations its browser extension took credit, and commissions, for online purchases it didn’t truly generate.
Testing by Bloomberg, affiliate-marketing researcher Ben Edelman and Capital One Shopping discovered Phia’s browser extension tagged its customers with cookies which made it appear like the app was referring prospects who truly got here from elsewhere.
The follow, generally called “cookie stuffing, has beforehand resulted in federal wire-fraud prosecutions.
The Phia in the Apple App Store. The Phia co-founders pushed for options in the e-commerce startup’s software program that took credit for gross sales it didn’t drive, according to Bloomberg. Bloomberg via Getty Images
However, Gates and Kianni haven’t been charged with any crime. Legal consultants told The Post this week prison prosecution — let alone something approaching wire fraud’s theoretical 20-year most sentence — seems unlikely and civil court claims and reimbursement calls for are a more real looking consequence.
When requested about the follow, Phia blamed it on a software program issue which it had (considerably handily) said it found just 24 hours earlier. However, inner messages reported by Bloomberg confirmed the founders conscious of and discussing the computerized cookie-dropping options months before.
In a Dec. 18 Slack message, Gates wrote she was “worried this is an issue across the board,” before asking if an computerized cookie drop was working on all websites.
Kianni individually wrote: “Whatever we can do to keep these cookies dropping will be amazing thank you.”
Phoebe Gates is seen on the Upper East Side on Thursday, May 14, 2026, in New York City. GC Images
The quantities they had been making had been substantial. Bloomberg reported that in June it accounted for roughly 51% of the money Phia claimed. After the options had been disabled in July, their average daily income reportedly plunged from around $80,000 to between $10,000 and $28,000. Phia claimed that drop also mirrored its choice to disable other monetization strategies.
The fallout threatens to derail what had been a remarkably fast rise for Gates and Kianni.
The pair met at Stanford, where Kianni, an Iranian-American, had arrived from a very different background to her tech royalty pal.
Sophia Kianni and Phoebe Gates attend a Female Founder impressed cocktail hour in Los Angeles, in January 2023. Getty Images
Kianni had based Climate Cardinals as a teenager to translate climate info into languages other than English and grew to become the youngest US member of the UN Secretary-General’s Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change. She has said she labored to develop into financially impartial from her mother and father and paid her own Stanford tuition.
The pals grew to become roommates and deliberate startup concepts before commencement — including, notably, a “Bluetooth tampon” — but settled on launching an online instrument for procuring comparability which also discovered reductions and secondhand alternate options.
Gates and Kianni talking onstage during day two of TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 at Moscone Center on Tuesday, October 28, 2025, in San Francisco, California. Getty Images for TechCrunch
The company raised a whopping $43.5 million before launch from heavyweight enterprise companies and superstar backers that includes Kris Jenner, Khloé Kardashian, Jessica Alba, Alix Earle, Hailey Bieber and Paris Hilton.
“Kris and Khloe obviously have concerns anytime a company they’ve invested in becomes caught up in allegations like this,” a Post source said.
“They made the investment based on their understanding of the company at the time, so naturally they want clarity now about the allegations and whether there is anything that could affect the business or their investment.”
Gates, Kianni and the final momager Kris Jenner, who invested in Phia. @krisjenner/Instagram
Gates’ title certainly helped, but her billionaire dad didn’t bankroll the company. However, the Microsoft founder wasn’t completely eliminated from it, either.
“My dad is super supportive,” Phoebe told The Post in an April 2025 interview for Phia’s launch. “He helps me, you know, thinking about engineering, hiring, things like that.”
Bill and Phoebe at the 2022 Time100 Gala in New York City. Getty Images
However, even before Phia’s cookie scandal blew up, some in the venture-capital world had been irked by what the app’s “over-the-top” hyping its superstar buyers, whihc some felt took its embrace of influencer tradition to another degree.
For occasion, to unfold the phrase of its $35.5 funding spherical, Phia posted a glowing 9 slide presentation highlighting its superstar buyers who joined, including Sydney Sweeney, but there was no point out of Phia’s institutional buyers – Notable Capital, Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins – which generally commit the lionshare of capital in celebrity-heavy funding rounds.
Some buyers took the omission as Phia “thumbing their nose” at conventional Silicon Valley financiers.
Sophia Kianni, Alex Cooper and Phoebe Gates. “The Burnouts” was initially on Cooper’s Unwell community. sophiakianni/Instagram
“They have this weird almost movie theater-esque thing about them,” said one tech investor who was conscious of Phia’s fundraising efforts but never wrote them a examine. “Every time I see someone do that, usually there’s trouble,” including that his firm “dodged a bullet.”
Within tech circles, the scandal has generated a vital quantity of animosity toward Phia, the source added, questioning whether or not Phia duped its own buyers while raising its most latest funding by displaying them phony metrics.
“I’m really amazed by the passionate growl this is getting,” the insider said.
Gates and Kianni had been always keen to current themselves as hands-on founders immersed in building the product, including they’d been coding until around 2 a.m. the night time before.
“We’re all staying up super late. We’re ordering a pizza. We’re working together,” Gates told The Post of startup life.
They also determined to flip their entrepreneurial journey into content too.
In April 2025, Gates and Kianni launched podcast “The Burnouts” under “Call Her Daddy” star Alex Cooper’s Unwell Network, promising listeners a peek inside the “chaotic lives” of the startup founders.
However, it didn’t set the podcasting world alight and their deal with Unwell ended after roughly a yr, for causes which have never been disclosed. However, the podcast has continued independently.
Being born into one of the richest and most recognizable households in the US meant Gates loved privilege, but also had a lot to live up to.
Born in 2002, she grew up alongside older siblings Jennifer, 30, and Rory, 27, in the household’s sprawling lakefront property in Medina, Wash.
Bill Gates wished his daughter Phoebe Gates a blissful birthday in an Instagram post, displaying this image of her as a younger woman. thisisbillgates/Instagram
She graduated Stanford in 2024 with a degree in human biology. Her mom, Melinda French Gates, delivered the graduation tackle.
Her mother and father had insisted she end school — despite her father famously dropping out of Harvard.
Gates, who is also skilled in ballet, has at least been candid about her enormous head start in life.
(L-R) Phoebe, 23, Bill, 70, Jennifer, 30, Melinda, 61, and Rory Gates, 27, pose together in a household {photograph}. Instagram
In a 2022 interview she said: “OK, I’m my parents’ daughter, that gives me immense privilege, but it’s not what I’m defined by. I want to have my own identity.”
While building Phia with Kianni, Gates also insisted she wished its success to have “no ties to my privilege or my last name.”
She’s already managed to make a stir for herself in superstar circles, relationship Paul McCartney’s grandson Arthur Donald for roughly two years before the pair cut up in 2025.
Melinda and Phoebe at the Clooney Foundation for Justice Albie Awards Gala at the New York Public Library in New York in 2023. Darian DiCianno/BFA.com / Shutterstock
The heiress then revealed in December she was relationship Chez Flynn, who she earlier mysteriously described as a new man who “literally doesn’t have Instagram”.
“Like, he deletes it, and it’s amazing,” she said on a Sept. 4, episode of “The Burnouts,” before figuring out him as her high faculty sweetheart, who she’s identified for 15 years.
The Phia scandal, however, has opened Gates up to precisely the criticism she’s been cautious to keep away from — a well-connected “nepo baby” catapulted into Silicon Valley’s fast lane then accused of taking shortcuts to success.
Phoebe Gates and boyfriend Chez Flynn. They went to high faculty together in Seattle. phoebegates/instagram
The Phia app co-founded by Gates and Kianni, which is now at the middle of a furore over comission funds it shoudln’t have gotten. Bloomberg via Getty Images
“I can’t say I am surprised… I don’t know a single person who actually used the app,” a fashion and media source sniffed to The Post.
“The product didn’t work or make much sense… You don’t need an app to online shop. If she didn’t have her last name she never would have been able to raise that kind of money from those kinds of people. And she was also distracted and wanted to be an influencer-podcaster…”
However, another fashion insider said it was merely a reminder Gates’ privilege comes with intense scrutiny and ensures anytime she stumbles the world might be watching.
“There were a lot of envious women eager to tear her down — she had a target on her back,” the source told The Post.
“The decision to launch the investigation and follow such a small company so closely wouldn’t have happened to anyone else. The practice of cookie stuffing is not uncommon; My sense is a lot of online shopping companies do that as they are starting out and get away with it. She was trying to build something… I feel for her.”
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