Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni revealed Sydney Sweeney, Paris Hilton, and 30+ A-listers as backers behind Phia’s $35.5M Series A, a cap table built like a marketing channel.
When Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni went on CBS Mornings on May 29 to reveal who had actually written checks into their latest round, the list read less like a cap table and more like a Met Gala seating chart.
Sydney Sweeney. Paris Hilton. Priyanka Chopra Jonas. Khloé Kardashian. Jessica Alba. Mindy Kaling. Alix Earle. Karlie Kloss. Halsey. Ice Spice. Alexandre Arnault. More than 30 cultural figures, all backing Phia, the AI shopping app the two Stanford roommates launched out of a dorm-room idea in 2024.
The reveal sits on top of a $35.5 million Series A that Phia announced in January, led by Notable Capital and Khosla Ventures with returning seed backer Kleiner Perkins. WWD has reported the round values the company at $185.5 million.
The pitch is simple. Phia is an AI-powered shopping app and browser extension that compares prices of fashion items across new, resale, and luxury market, helping shoppers find cheaper secondhand alternatives and calculate resale value before they buy. Founders have branded it as “Google Flights for fashion.”
And by its own account, it’s working. Phia now scans more than 350 million products in real time across nearly 10,000 retail partners, has grown to 1.5 million users, and attributes a 50% reduction in return rates to its recommendation model. The company says it’s on pace for nine-figure sales growth in 2026.
A cap table built like a marketing channel
The celebrity cohort isn’t accidental. It’s the strategy.
“For us, it was about bringing those people and getting them around the table to build what we’re doing with the future of shopping,” Gates says of the approach on CBS Mornings.
The angel list runs deep into fashion, beauty, and entertainment, Ashley Graham, Winnie Harlow, Bobbi Brown, Rachel Zoe, and entrepreneur Leila Hormozi all wrote checks. So did LVMH heir Alexandre Arnault. Layered on top is an operator bench that reads like a who’s who of consumer tech: Robinhood co-founder Vlad Tenev, Meta’s head of product Naomi Gleit, Ariel Investments co-CEO Mellody Hobson, OpenAI’s Charles Porch, and ElevenLabs co-founder Mati Staniszewski.
It builds on a seed round from September 2025, when Kleiner Perkins led an $8 million check alongside Hailey Bieber, Kris Jenner, Sara Blakely, Michael Rubin, and Sheryl Sandberg. That brings Phia’s total funding to $43.5 million.
Several of the new investors framed their decisions in personal terms. “My mom has always been the one with the futuristic mindset, so when Kris Jenner gets involved in a business, I am all ears,” Khloé Kardashian says of her decision to follow her mother in.
Jessica Alba, who built her own consumer empire at The Honest Company, framed her bet around taste. “When I first saw what Phia was building, it really clicked for me. I’ve always believed in investing in pieces you truly love and will wear for years, not just for a season,” Alba says.
Karlie Kloss, who has known the founders since their Stanford days, was more direct. “I’ve had the privilege of knowing Phoebe and Sophia since their early days at Stanford, and it has been incredible to watch them grow from ambitious students into two of the most impressive founders I know,” Kloss says, in comments reported by WWD.
Earle, a creator who has built her own brand, framed it as a peer endorsement. “As a female founder myself, I believe in the importance of women supporting women in business,” she says.
Why the bet, now
The founders’ framing of the opportunity is broader than fashion.
“AI is reshaping nearly every industry, but shopping is stuck in the past,” Gates says.
“Commerce itself for the consumer hasn’t really been adapted in the last 30 years, and the opportunity to make a truly personalized, end-to-end shopping experience is today,” she tells TechCrunch.
Kianni puts it in product terms. “All this cumbersome, manual work really can become compressed and be able to get you to the shortest path possible to the perfect item,” she says.
The category is moving in their direction. According to MarketsandMarkets, the global AI in retail market stood at $31.12 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $164.74 billion by 2030, growing at a 32% compound annual rate.
For Gates and Kianni, 23 and 24 at the time of the round, the angel reveal is also a distribution play in disguise. A cap table that doubles as a press cycle, a content engine, and a built-in audience of hundreds of millions of followers is its own kind of moat. For founders building consumer products today, that may be the real takeaway: the round you raise and the round you announce don’t have to be the same thing.
