Phoebe Gates and the Generational Bet Behind Phia

When people hear 'Gates,' they expect a certain kind of story. Phoebe Gates is busy writing a different one.

Phia began the way a lot of Stanford companies do: two randomly assigned roommates who turned late-night conversations into a whiteboard full of ideas. Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni bonded over activism and a shared habit — both were avid secondhand shoppers who spent hours comparing prices across browser tabs before buying anything. They figured other people were running the same tedious loop, and that software could do it instantly instead.

They were rejected from one entrepreneurship class, accepted into another, and picked up early pre-seed backing. In 2023 the pair moved to New York to build in earnest. Phia — a name that folds together Sophia and the friendship at the company's center — launched as an app and browser extension in April 2025.

The product is simple to describe and hard to build: an AI shopping assistant that scans new and resale listings across tens of thousands of retailers in real time, so a $200 dress can be checked against secondhand sellers in a single click. The pitch is convenience with a conscience — save money, cut waste, and skip the hundred open tabs.

It has moved fast. Phia has reported crossing 500,000 users and more than 5,000 direct brand partners, clearing its first major app-store download milestones within months of launch.

The funding tells its own story. Phia has raised more than $40 million from investors including Kleiner Perkins, Kris Jenner, and Hailey Bieber, at a valuation around $185 million. The detail Gates keeps returning to is that she hasn't taken a dollar from her parents. 'I have a chip on my shoulder,' she has said, describing a drive to build something with no ties to her privilege or her last name.

Alongside Phia, Gates and Kianni co-host The Burnouts, a podcast on Alex Cooper's Unwell Network about careers, ambition, and confidence, with guests that have included Sara Blakely and Whitney Wolfe Herd. Gates is also a vocal advocate for reproductive rights, recognized in 2024 as a 'Rising Reproductive Freedom Champion.'

The nepo-baby question follows her everywhere, and she has decided to answer it by out-working it. Whether Phia becomes generational or not, the posture is the point: prove it on the merits, or don't count it.