Bill Gates daughter Phoebe Gates always keeps one thing out of pitch deck for her startup

Phoebe Gates, the daughter of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and philanthropist Melinda French Gates is building her AI shopping startup Phia with one rule that her last name stays out of the pitch deck.

As reported by Fortune, speaking on a latest podcast episode Phoebe mentioned that she is determined to prove that her fashion startup stands on its own. The 23-year-old Stanford graduate recently raised $35 million for Phia, which is now valued at $185 million. I have a chip on my shoulder,” Gates said on Yahoo Finance’s Opening Bid Unfiltered podcast. “No ties to my privilege or my last name.”

Building Phia from the dorm room

Phoebe co-founded Phia with her Standford roommate Sophia Kianni.

For this unaware, it is an AI-powered shopping assistant which helps users in finding better deals by comparing prices across retail and resale sites in realtime. Since it launch in 2025, the app has managed to garner hundreds of thousands of downloads. Phia’s latest funding round was led by Notable Capital, with participation from Kleiner Perkins and Khosla Ventures.

The startup’s target audience? “Young women who hustle,” Phoebe told Fortune.

Despite her billionaire lineage, Phoebe has refused financial backing from her parents. She’s focused on raising outside capital and navigating investor meetings that sometimes veer into personal territory — including questions about future children. “I called my mom crying,” Gates recalled on the Call Her Daddy podcast. “She said, ‘Get up or get out the game, sis.’”Phoebe acknowledges her father’s business acumen especially the importance of building a strong team but insists Phia is not a legacy project.

“The chip on my shoulder is not only proving myself,” she said, “but building something novel and unique that consumers actually love.”

Phoebe Gates gets $35 million for Phia

Recently, Phoebe Gates 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."