Phoebe Gates needs to construct her AI buying firm whereas maintaining one factor out of her pitch deck: her final title. The 23-year-old youngest daughter of billionaire Microsoft founder Invoice Gates and philanthropist Melinda French Gates just lately raised $35 million for Phia, which is now valued at round $185 million.
However she’s decided for the enterprise to face by itself, with “no ties to my privilege or my last name,” Phoebe Gates informed Yahoo Finance’s Opening Bid Unfiltered podcast in an episode revealed Thursday.
“I have a chip on my shoulder,” she stated, describing her drive to show she will win over personal fairness in Silicon Valley primarily based on advantage, not inheritance or legacy.
Phoebe Gates’ feedback come in the course of the resurfacing of her father’s connections to Jeffrey Epstein, though representatives for Invoice Gates have repeatedly denied his involvement and any associated accusations. Phoebe Gates didn’t remark in regards to the allegations, however French Gates just lately stated her ex-husband “has to answer” for Epstein recordsdata mentions simply weeks after it was revealed she had obtained $8 billion towards her philanthropic group, Pivotal, as a part of her divorce settlement.
Phoebe Gates did acknowledge her father’s enterprise success, saying: “From my dad I’ve really learned that your team is the core of what you’re building. You can’t do anything without an incredible team.”
How Phoebe Gates is paving her personal path
Phoebe Gates cofounded Phia, an AI buying assistant, along with her Stanford College roommate Sophia Kianni. The buying assistant plugs into browsers like Chrome and Safari to check costs and floor offers throughout tens of hundreds of retail and resale websites in actual time. It basically serves as your individual private deal finder: say you’re a $200 gown from Anthropologie, Phia can discover and examine costs at second-hand sellers to assist clients discover a higher value.
“Our target consumer is a young woman who’s hustling. She shops like a genius, but she doesn’t want to waste her time doing it,” Gates informed Fortune’s Most Highly effective Girls editor Emma Hinchliffe in April 2025.
The New York–primarily based startup launched its app in 2025 and has grown rapidly, garnering a whole lot of hundreds of downloads in its first months as traders pile into AI “agents” that automate digital duties. A latest $35 million funding spherical led by Notable Capital, with participation from corporations together with Kleiner Perkins and Khosla Ventures, pushed Phia’s valuation to about $185 million lower than a yr after an preliminary $8 million seed spherical.
Gates and Kianni first brainstormed startup concepts of their Stanford dorm room, biking via ideas earlier than touchdown on a client software that included Gates’ curiosity in girls’s empowerment (seemingly modeled after her personal mom) and Kianni’s sustainability focus.
In keeping with Gates’ insistence she builds her personal enterprise with out the advantages of her final title, the younger founder hasn’t taken cash from her mother and father for Phia. As an alternative, she’s insisted on elevating outdoors capital at the same time as some traders stay fixated on her private life as an alternative of her enterprise enterprise.
Gates and Kianni have stated the subject of their potential future kids has come up in conferences earlier than, which was understandably irritating for the entrepreneurial duo. However French Gates—a girls’s rights activist—gave Gates some stern recommendation: “Get up or get out the game.”
“We’ll have investors ask us all the time, ‘Well, what happens when you two go have babies?’ And I remember one time crying about that. I called my mom, and she was like, ‘Get up or get out the game, sis.’ I was like, damn,” Gates stated on an episode of the Name Her Daddy podcast revealed in April 2025.
It’s now a saying Gates reminds herself of when navigating conferences with traders, all whereas trying to buck any nepo child accusations. This isn’t simply one other legacy mission, Gates argues.
“The chip on my shoulder is not only proving myself but building something, you know, novel and unique that consumers actually love,” she stated.
