Introduction
With her most recent fundraising achievement, Phoebe Gates, the daughter of philanthropist Melinda French Gates and Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, has garnered a lot of attention in the international startup community. According to records seen by Bloomberg, her business Phia, an AI-driven platform for product discovery and buying, is currently in the process of obtaining US$30 million in new funding. As one of the year’s fastest-growing consumer AI startups, the company has confirmed the ongoing round.
The current York-based company is expected to be valued at roughly US$180 million during this current funding phase, which represents a dramatic increase in a short amount of time. Considering that Phia had just finished its first external investment, a US$8 million seed round in September, the growth trajectory is impressive. The market’s view that AI-powered commerce solutions could transform how people search, compare, and shop online is reinforced by the quick investment acceleration.
Founders, Investors & Funding Leadership
Phoebe Gates and climate activist Sophia Kianni co-founded Phia, which has gained a reputation for combining retail behavior, technology, and product discovery into a single, efficient consumer engine. The large number of well-known investors supporting the business gives it even more energy. Global celebrities like Hailey Bieber, media and
retail icon Kris Jenner, former Meta CEO Sheryl Sandberg, and Spanx founder Sara Blakely are among those who have already made investments. Phia’s early cultural significance outside of conventional tech communities is shown by their presence.
It’s interesting to note that, despite Phoebe’s admission in a Vogue interview that he supports the company’s goals, Bill Gates has not made any investments. A captivating story of Phia’s ascent has been produced by this fusion of independent entrepreneurial personality and encouraging heritage brand identification.
Notable Capital, led by managing partner Hans Tung, who is well-known for his early wagers on industry-defining companies like Airbnb and AI startup Anthropic, will lead the most recent round. Influential firms Kleiner Perkins and Khosla Ventures— represented by seasoned investor Keith Rabois—will also participate in the round. Their participation shows a strong belief in both Phia’s business model and the larger AI agent economy that is developing globally.
Product Offering: AI-Powered Shopping Search
Phia’s AI-powered shopping assistant, which was created to address issues that the majority of online shoppers face on a daily basis, is at the core of the company’s innovation strategy. According to the company, consumers waste time browsing irrelevant product listings, manually comparing pricing, and navigating between websites, all while brands struggle to attract their desired clientele. Phia’s solution, which is available as an app and an extension for Chrome desktop and Safari mobile, evaluates product characteristics, price variations, and preferences to make recommendations and quickly identify better offers. The platform has had 750,000 downloads in just eight months, indicating early traction and interest from a consumer base that prioritizes digital technology.
Position in the AI Agent Market
The startup places itself in the growing wave of AI-agent platforms that are changing workflow automation, labor, and decision-making. Phia contrasted itself with elite automation businesses like Harvey (valued at US$8 billion in legal AI), Mercor (valued at US$10 billion in HR automation), and Cursor (valued at US$29.3 billion in developer productivity) in their pitch deck. These examples show how cognitively capable AI systems are quickly growing to multi-billion-dollar valuations; Phia wants to be a part of that frontier, particularly in the consumer and commerce sector.
The history of the company itself is pretty unusual. In their Stanford dorm room, Gates and Kianni first started coming up with ideas. They first envisioned a wearable technology concept, namely a tampon with Bluetooth that would be used as a health tracking tool. The creators saw a chance to address global inefficiencies in the real
world, so they quickly turned what had started out as an experimental prototype toward consumer shopping. Today, that change has evolved into a business that is drawing interest from early mass-market consumers, media figures, and venture capital executives.
Conclusion
Phia’s US$30 million financing campaign is a turning point in the explosion of innovation in AI-commerce. In order to transform online shopping, Gates, Kianni, and a powerful group of investors are working together to develop a platform that combines automation, user intent detection, and shopping intelligence. Phia is well-positioned to become one of the groundbreaking AI-shopping solutions of its generation because to its quick valuation rise, robust early usage figures, and strategic advice from top VC firms. The company’s growth could be crucial in lowering customer complexity and redefining tailored product discovery in international marketplaces as the digital economy develops.
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