Phia, a cutting-edge AI-driven shopping agent co-founded by Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, has successfully secured an $8 million seed funding round led by Kleiner Perkins. The round also saw participation from notable investors like Hailey Bieber, Kris Jenner, and Sheryl Sandberg. Launched in April 2025, Phia offers an iOS app and mobile browser extension that empowers consumers with an AI agent capable of comparing prices, calculating resale values, summarizing product details, and tracking price drops in real time. In just five months, Phia has attracted 500,000 users, formed over 5,000 direct brand partnerships, and facilitated tens of millions in sales.
Phoebe Gates highlighted the inefficiencies in current shopping methods, emphasizing the time wasted by consumers in comparing prices and seeking deals. Sophia Kianni added that Phia aims to simplify finding the best prices and create a new shopping search engine that learns from user data to provide personalized results.
Phia processes billions of fashion products daily and boasts one of the largest U.S. databases for secondhand fashion, with over 300 million items indexed. Annie Case from Kleiner Perkins praised Phia’s approach to addressing consumer pain points and enhancing brand discoverability while reducing acquisition costs.
The company plans to introduce a personalized shopping agent powered by a proprietary large language model (LLM) trained on extensive user transaction data. This agent will provide tailored purchase suggestions and operate at greater speed and lower cost than existing models. Michael Rubin of Fanatics expressed strong support for Phia’s potential to disrupt the e-commerce landscape.
With the new funding, Phia aims to expand its team across various domains, invest in proprietary model development, and enhance its platform’s infrastructure to manage large-scale data. The company also plans to expand into new verticals and strengthen its consumer brand and partnerships. Phia, headquartered in New York City, boasts a team with backgrounds from prestigious universities and major tech companies.
