NEW YORK - Sep 17, 2025 (UTC) - Phia, the AI-powered shopping agent founded by Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, announced its $8 million seed round led by Kleiner Perkins, with participation from investors such as Hailey Bieber, Kris Jenner, Sara Blakely, Michael Rubin, Desiree Gruber, Sheryl Sandberg, and eBay Ventures. The funding comes as the company has reached 500,000 users and more than 5,000 direct brand partners since launching its app and mobile browser extension in April 2025.
Phia is an AI-powered shopping agent that helps users find the best pieces across 40,000+ retail and resale sites instantly. The platform combines real-time price intelligence, resale insights, and AI-driven recommendations to streamline every buying decision. The iOS app and mobile browser extension gives consumers an AI agent that compares prices, calculates resale value, summarizes product details, and tracks price drops in real time to help them make smarter decisions instantly.
Founded by Phoebe Gates, daughter of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and Sophia Kianni, the startup emerged from their Stanford University dorm room where they were randomly assigned as roommates. Both avid secondhand shoppers, they realized they conducted extensive research before making purchases and recognized a broader market need for automated shopping assistance.
“We wanted to create something that could do all of our shopping for us,” said Kianni. “Do it instantly and effortlessly, rather than all the manual price comparison and tab-opening we were doing on our computers.”
The founders initially faced rejection from one entrepreneurship class before being accepted into another and securing early pre-seed funding from Soma Capital and a Stanford professor. They moved to New York in 2023 to build Phia full-time, testing their minimum viable product with approximately 500 users despite early technical limitations.
“During the time we were building the MVP [minimum viable product], we ended up going out and—even though it was awful—giving it to about 500 different users,” said Gates. “The stats we were seeing were incredible, huge repeat purchase rates, retention was huge. Mind you, at the time Phia was not perfect… But I remember there was one day we took the MVP down, because it wasn’t working the way we wanted. And people reached out: ‘Where’s Phia?'”
To Kleiner Perkins partner Annie Case, Phia is building on broader economic and consumer tailwinds in the retail market. “There is a shift towards value,” Case said. “American consumers are price selective, deal-driven, and less brand loyal. Phia is meeting the moment.”
The funding addresses what the founders see as a significant innovation gap in the shopping experience. “I think there’s been so little innovation in the shopping space for so long because it seems like ‘well, that’s a hobby for girls,” said Kianni. “The reality is that the fashion industry is worth between $1.7 and $2.5 trillion.”
The U.S. e-commerce apparel market crossed $200 billion this year and is heavily skewed towards mobile, yet the digital shopping experience hasn’t evolved significantly over the past decade. Phia aims to address this through continuous user engagement and product iteration.
“We’re talking to over four users a day,” said Gates. “Every other week, we have 40 young women come to our office who are power users. And we tell them: ‘Roast our app. Tell us what you hate. What do you want to see in the future?'”
The company is headquartered in New York City with a team from Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, Georgia Tech, and alumni of Pinterest, Amazon, Meta, and Google. Gates and Kianni also host their own podcast, The Burnouts, via Alex Cooper’s Unwell Network, which launched in April alongside their app.
“We are scientists,” Gates added. “We need to be consistently running experiments. If users don’t like it, we go back to the drawing board… We ask: Why is that? What can we fix here?”
The funding comes as e-commerce tools have experienced varying levels of interest from venture capitalists, with questions about the future of the discretionary shopping market. However, Phia’s approach focuses on understanding consumer behavior through continuous dialogue and experimentation rather than solely relying on algorithmic predictions.
About Phia
Phia is an AI-powered shopping agent that helps users find the best pieces across 40,000+ retail and resale sites instantly. Founded by Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, Phia combines real-time price intelligence, resale insights, and AI-driven recommendations to streamline every buying decision. The company is headquartered in New York City with a team from Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, Georgia Tech, and alumni of Pinterest, Amazon, Meta, and Google.
