Phoebe Gates wants her $185M AI startup to succeed with ‘no ties to my privilege or my last name’

But she’s determined for the venture to stand on its own, with “no ties to my privilege or my last name,” Phoebe Gates told Yahoo Finance’s Opening Bid Unfiltered podcast in an episode published in February. 

“I have a chip on my shoulder,” she said, describing her drive to prove she can win over private equity in Silicon Valley based on merit, not inheritance or legacy. 

Phoebe Gates’ comments came during the resurfacing of her father’s connections to Jeffrey Epstein, although representatives for Bill Gates have repeatedly denied his involvement and any related accusations. Phoebe Gates didn’t comment about the allegations, but French Gates earlier this year said her ex-husband “has to answer” for Epstein files mentions just weeks after it was revealed she had received $8 billion toward her philanthropic organization, Pivotal, as part of her divorce settlement.

Phoebe Gates did acknowledge her father’s business 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 own path

Phoebe Gates cofounded Phia, an AI shopping assistant, with her Stanford University roommate Sophia Kianni. The shopping assistant plugs into browsers like Chrome and Safari to compare prices and surface deals across tens of thousands of retail and resale sites in real time. It essentially serves as your own personal deal finder: Say you’re looking at a $200 dress from Anthropologie, Phia can find and compare prices at secondhand sellers to help customers find a better price. 

“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 told Fortune’s Most Powerful Women editor Emma Hinchliffe in April 2025.

This week, Bloomberg reported Phia’s browser extension had allegedly been claiming credit for online sales it didn’t drive, a practice known in affiliate marketing as “cookie stuffing.” According to Bloomberg, which tested the extension across more than 50 websites alongside Capital One Shopping and independent researcher Ben Edelman, Phia silently opened a background tab during checkout and injected its own referral code, overriding legitimate referrals from other publishers in violation of many affiliate networks’ policies.

A Phia spokesperson told Bloomberg the company was made aware within the prior 24 hours a recent code release “was causing misattributions from a subset of users” and said the issue had been fixed. Bloomberg retested the extension after contacting the company and found it had stopped automatically claiming the referral click.

The New York–based startup launched its app in 2025 and has grown quickly, garnering hundreds of thousands of downloads in its first months as investors pile into AI “agents” that automate digital tasks. A recent $35 million funding round led by Notable Capital, with participation from firms including Kleiner Perkins and Khosla Ventures, pushed Phia’s valuation to about $185 million less than a year after an initial $8 million seed round.​ 

Gates and Kianni first brainstormed startup ideas in their Stanford dorm room, cycling through concepts before landing on a consumer tool that included Gates’ interest in women’s empowerment (likely modeled after her own mother) and Kianni’s sustainability focus. 

In line with Gates’ insistence she builds her own venture without the benefits of her last name, the young founder hasn’t taken money from her parents for Phia. Instead, she’s insisted on raising outside capital even as some investors remain fixated on her personal life instead of her business venture. 

Gates and Kianni have said the topic of their potential future children has come up in meetings before, which was understandably frustrating for the entrepreneurial duo. But French Gates—a women’s rights activist—gave Gates some stern advice: “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 said on an episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast published in April 2025.

It’s now a saying Gates reminds herself of when navigating meetings with investors, all while attempting to buck any nepo baby accusations. This isn’t just another legacy project, 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 said.

A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on February 21, 2026.

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