Phia, the AI shopping startup founded by Stanford roommates Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, just closed a $35 million Series A led by Notable Capital with participation from Khosla Ventures and returning investor Kleiner Perkins. The ten-month-old company has already achieved 11x revenue growth and secured 6,200 retail partners while attracting hundreds of thousands of monthly active users. For context, this comes just three months after Phia raised $8 million from celebrity investors including Kris Jenner and Sheryl Sandberg, signaling fierce investor appetite for AI-powered commerce platforms.
Phia isn't letting a New York snowstorm slow its momentum. While founders Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni sheltered at home during this week's blizzard, their startup just announced a $35 million Series A that validates an ambitious bet: AI can actually make online shopping fun again.
The round, led by Notable Capital with participation from Khosla Ventures and returning investor Kleiner Perkins, comes just three months after Phia secured $8 million from a roster of celebrity backers. That's the kind of fundraising velocity that turns heads in venture circles, especially for a company that's only ten months old.
"We are just at such a prime time of opportunity," Gates told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview. "Commerce itself for the consumer hasn't really been adapted in the last 30 years, and the opportunity to make a truly personalized, end-to-end shopping experience is today."
The numbers back up that confidence. Phia has logged 11x revenue growth since launch and onboarded 6,200 retail partners while building a user base that now spans hundreds of thousands of monthly actives. Those aren't vanity metrics - they represent real traction in a notoriously difficult market where have promised transformation for years but rarely delivered.
