Phoebe Gates’ shopping startup, Phia, has secured $35 million in funding. The app and browser extension helps shoppers find sustainable and affordable alternatives. Her father, tech titan Bill Gates, has lent his expertise, even working a customer service shift to understand user needs. Phia, co-founded with Sophia Kianni, boasts hundreds of thousands of users and significant revenue growth.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’ daughter, Phoebe Gates, has recently closed a $35 million funding round for her shopping startup, Phia. The 10-month-old company’s latest investment round was led by Notable Capital, with participation from Khosla Ventures and returning investor Kleiner Perkins. Phia is a mobile app and browser extension that helps shoppers save money by showing resale and secondhand alternatives to the products they are viewing. However, Bill Gates has yet to invest in the venture. Instead, the Microsoft founder donated his time and experience to her daughter’s startup. Soon after the startup’s launch in 2025, the tech billionaire used LinkedIn to announce a shift in customer service to support the team in the days that followed. Gates announced his collaboration with Phia and wrote: “I’ve entered the startup world again.”

Read Bill Gates’ full message on helping his daughter with Phia

In his LinkedIn post, Gate wrote: “I’ve entered the startup world again…When your daughter asks if you’d be willing to work a shift in customer service at her startup, the only right answer is yes.I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how technology can make systems more efficient, equitable, and accessible. But I’ve learned over the years that the best way to understand how something works, or where it breaks, is to go straight to the people using it.That’s why I’ll be joining the Phia customer experience team for a day this week. Phia is a fashion-tech tool built to make shopping smarter and more sustainable, and it’s the brainchild of my daughter Phoebe Gates and her co-founder Sophia Kianni.They’ve built an app and browser extension that helps people shop smarter by finding the best prices, surfacing secondhand options, and showing lower-impact alternatives across thousands of online retailers.It’s been inspiring to watch them tackle a massive challenge, rethinking the way we shop, by meeting users where they are.And now, I’ll be doing the same.Looking forward to getting back into the startup scene. Hopefully, I won’t break anything (no promises).📲Download the Phia iOS app for free at join.phia.com💻Or if you shop on your computer like me, they have a free chrome extension at gophia.comLet me know what you think! You never know who’s on the other end of the customer service line…”In 2025, Phoebe Gates co-founded the startup with her Stanford University roommate, Sophia Kianni, with an $8 million investment from Kris Jenner, Sara Blakely, and Sheryl Sandberg. The company already has hundreds of thousands of monthly active users, has recorded 11x revenue growth since launch, and has onboarded 6,200 retail partners.