Phoebe Gates’ classmates at Stanford are helping Page Six crack the code. The daughter of Bill and Melinda Gates may be in trouble for her buyout startup Phia, raising questions about how qualified she is to run a technology business when her own coding experience appears limited. One of Gates’ classmates at Stanford revealed that the billionaire heiress apparently did not take advanced coding classes in school, as her degree in human biology did not require it. In fact, “Phoebe didn’t have to take a single computer science class. She could have taken classes that involved understanding how computer science works, but it would have revolved a lot around biology research, if she had taken those classes at all,” the source said. Phoebe Gates could be in trouble for her fashion startup Phia. (Pictured above at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2025.) Getty Images for TechCrunch Phoebe is the 23-year-old daughter of billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates (pictured above). phoebegates/Instagram Stanford and Gates have not responded to Page Six’s request for comment. Gates wouldn’t have been able to simply jump into advanced coding classes, our source explained. He would have needed to complete prerequisites, which made it difficult to fit them into his schedule, especially since he graduated a year early. However, Gates, 23, did take an applied artificial intelligence and entrepreneurship class that helped launch Phia, the multibillion-dollar digital personal shopping assistant startup she co-founded with her Stanford roommate, Sophia Kianni, 25. The young entrepreneurs found themselves at the center of a tech scandal this week after being accused of “cookie-stuffing” at the startup. But it turns out that Gates, the baby of nepo tech and her startup, were the laughingstock of her alma mater. According to our source, her Stanford classmates didn’t know she was a good coder. In fact, when plans for Phia were announced, some computer science students reportedly “laughed in my face,” they said. Phoebe Gates attended Stanford, where her classmates say she was not known as a good coder. yujie – stock.adobe.com Gates created Phia with her Stanford roommate Sophia Kianni, pictured right. Getty Images Want more celebrity and pop culture news? Start your day with Page Six Daily. Thanks for signing up! A representative for Kianni confirmed that she did not take any formal computer science classes at Stanford. Our source joked that Kianni “wouldn’t know what a cookie was” because of the courses he took for his Science, Technology and Society degree. Kianni is identified in leaked Slack messages discussing Phia’s controversial “cookie stuffing” practice with engineers and allegedly instructing them to keep cookies “dripping.” He allegedly told an engineer on Slack: “Anything we can do to keep these cookies dropping will be amazing.” Bloomberg reported that Phia’s “Auto Drop” feature may have allowed the company to collect commissions on purchases to which it did not actually send buyers. Phia initially called it a software bug, but new reports, including Kianni’s alleged Slack messages, suggest the feature has been around for months. (In simple terms, “cookie-cutter” can make it look like a company sent a buyer to a retailer when it didn’t, potentially allowing it to collect a commission anyway.) Phia has been accused of “cookie-cutter stuffing,” which can make it appear that a company sent a buyer to a retailer when it did not. Bloomberg via Getty Images Kianni and Gates’ coding knowledge is now being questioned in light of the controversy. Getty Images The company has disputed some findings and says it has closed the feature and is reviewing affected sales. After Phia disabled the features in July, the company’s average daily revenue plummeted from around $80,000 to between $10,000 and $28,000, according to Bloomberg. Gates, who reportedly resides in a $51 million Flatiron penthouse, and Kianni are unlikely to face the maximum 20 years behind bars on possible charges stemming from the “cookie-cutter” allegations, but they could face civil lawsuits and financial penalties if the claims are proven, experts told The Post.
