Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni’s AI shopping app Phia has captured both investor and consumer attention this year, raising $8 million in seed funding while amassing 500,000 users within the five months since its launch in April 2025. The fundraising round, which closed in just three-and-a-half weeks, includes high-profile backers like Kris Jenner and Hailey Bieber, highlighting not just Gen Z’s disruptive approach, but also their ability to attract celebrity influence and venture capital at record speed.
The Making of Phia
Founded by former Stanford roommates Gates and Kianni, Phia was inspired by their own struggle to efficiently compare prices and source the best deals online. “We wanted to create something that could do all our shopping for us. Do it instantly and effortlessly, rather than all the manual price comparison and tab-opening we were doing on our computers,” explains Kianni. In response, their AI-powered app and mobile extension now scan over 300 million fashion items and aggregate billions of listings—becoming a central hub for both new and resale shopping.
AI-Driven Innovation
Phia’s technology is driven by proprietary large language models and a multimodal AI infrastructure. Users gain instant access to price comparisons, resale value estimates, price tracking, and personalized product summaries for more than 40,000 retail and resale sites. “AI is reshaping nearly every industry, but shopping is stuck in the past. Consumers still waste hours comparing prices and hunting for deals, only to still end up overpaying,” Gates notes. Phia is solving these pain points, as confirmed by its soaring user retention rates and repeat purchases.
Influencer and Celebrity Power
The app’s fundraising round was led by Kleiner Perkins and features notable investors such as Kris Jenner, Hailey Bieber, Sara Blakely, Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin, and Sheryl Sandberg. Kris Jenner expressed her excitement, saying, “The way you build a brand today is simple—you build it for your audience. And that’s exactly what Phoebe and Sophia are doing. They know exactly how to grow something organically. I’m so proud to be part of their journey”.
“Hailey Bieber adds, “Phoebe and Sophia recognize the white space that existed in the fashion industry and were quick to build a product this generation wants. They move fast and listen deeply to their customers.”.
The Numbers Behind Phia
The platform’s database includes over 300 million secondhand fashion items—one of the largest in the U.S.—in addition to billions of new products indexed and updated daily. Over 5,000 brand partnerships contribute to tens of millions of dollars in generated sales, demonstrating that Phia is not only a consumer favorite but also a rising industry player.
Product Impact and Future Vision
Phia’s product team, staffed by talent from Amazon, Pinterest, Meta, and Google, is focused on deepening AI personalization. The next stage includes developing a personal shopping agent using Phia’s proprietary language model for transaction-driven insights. “We started Phia to make it easy for consumers to find the best price on items they love and to create a new search engine for shopping that learns from user data at scale to deliver personalized results,” shares Kianni.
Reshaping the Shopping Experience
With funding now in place, Phia is expanding engineering, AI research, and marketing efforts. Its mission is clear: more efficient, enjoyable, and cost-effective shopping across luxury, resale, and everyday fashion. As Annie Case, partner at Kleiner Perkins, puts it: “Phia is redefining how people make purchase decisions. During diligence, we saw Phia tackling key pain points: helping consumers compare prices and discover new brands, while giving brands lower acquisition costs, better discoverability, and smarter retargeting.”
Phia’s rapid user adoption, star-studded investor base, and relentless product innovation mark a turning point in how Gen Z shops—and how tech is powering the entire retail experience.
