The funding round will value the startup at $180 million, following Phia’s initial $8 million investment just a few months ago.
Phoebe Gates, the daughter of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates, is securing $30 million in fresh capital for Phia, a startup leveraging artificial intelligence in e-commerce, as revealed in a presentation viewed by Bloomberg.
A company representative verified the funding round.
The fundraising effort values the New York-based company at $180 million, occurring only a few months following Phia’s initial $8 million funding round in September.
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Phia, co-founded by Gates and Sophia Kianni, has the support of a group of celebrities such as model and entrepreneur Hailey Bieber, matriarch of the Kardashian family Kris Jenner, former Meta Platforms COO Sheryl Sandberg, and founder of Spanx Sara Blakely.
Bill Gates has not made an investment, Phoebe Gates mentioned to Vogue, although he has publicly endorsed the startup.
The funding round will be headed by the venture capital company Notable Capital, managed by partner Hans Tung, who previously invested in Anthropic and Airbnb. Investor Kleiner Perkins is also involved, along with Khosla Ventures led by Keith Rabois.
Phia’s argument for its AI agent is that e-commerce is flawed, with shoppers spending excessive time searching for discounts or specific products, while companies are reaching the incorrect audience.
The pioneers are creating an AI-powered search engine, available as an app and browser add-on for Chrome on desktop and Safari on mobile, designed to assist users in locating products, evaluating costs, and identifying discounts. The service has been downloaded 750,000 times over the past eight months up to November, as reported by the company.
Valuations are rising sharply for so-called AI agent startups that claim to handle routine tasks, either freeing up human workers’ time or potentially replacing them. In its presentation materials, Phia positioned itself alongside rapidly expanding agent startups like Harvey in the legal field, recently valued at $8 billion; Mercor in human resources, valued at $10 billion; and Cursor in software development, valued at $29.3 billion.
Gates and Kianni started developing the company in their Stanford dorm room, as they shared with Vogue, beginning with the concept of a Bluetooth tampon before shifting their focus to fashion.
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