'I have a chip on my shoulder.' Phoebe Gates wants her $185 million AI startup Phia to succeed with 'no ties to my privilege or my last name' | Fortune

TL;DR

• 1

  Phoebe Gates, 23, wants her AI shopping startup Phia to succeed on merit alone: She told Yahoo Finance she has a chip on her shoulder and wants the venture to have no ties to her privilege or her last name. The company is now valued at roughly $185 million.

• 2

  Phia is a browser extension that acts as a personal deal finder: It plugs into Chrome and Safari to compare prices and surface deals across tens of thousands of retail and resale sites in real time. The target user is a young woman who shops like a genius but doesn't want to waste time.

• 3

  Phia has not taken money from Gates' billionaire parents: Instead, Gates raised over $43 million from outside investors, including a $35 million round led by Notable Capital with Kleiner Perkins and Khosla Ventures. The company launched in 2025 and has seen hundreds of thousands of downloads.

• 4

  Bloomberg reported Phia's extension may have improperly claimed credit for sales it didn't drive: The practice, known as cookie stuffing, involved Phia silently opening a background tab and overriding legitimate referral codes. A Phia spokesperson blamed a code release and said the issue was fixed.

• 5

  Investors have asked Gates and co-founder Sophia Kianni about their future children: Melinda French Gates told her daughter, Get up or get out the game. Gates recalled crying about the questions but now uses her mom's advice as a mantra.