Phia Raises $35 Million Series A to Scale AI Shopping Agent and Brand Intelligence Platform

New updates have been reported about Phia.

Phia, the AI shopping agent launched in April 2025 by co-founders Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, has secured a $35 million Series A round at a $185 million valuation to deepen its role as an AI alignment layer between brands and consumers. Led by Notable Capital with participation from Khosla Ventures and returning backer Kleiner Perkins, the funding comes after Phia reached over 1 million users and signed more than 6,200 retail partners, spanning contemporary to luxury brands that collectively represent billions in annual gross merchandise volume. The platform, which embeds an AI agent directly into users’ normal shopping behavior, has already driven millions of dollars in monthly sales for partners and delivered 11x revenue growth since launch. For brands, Phia reports double-digit performance uplifts: 13% higher conversion, 30% stronger new customer acquisition, 15% higher average order values, and more than a 50% reduction in return rates, all under a zero-upfront, performance-based commercial model.

The new capital will be used to expand Phia’s AI and machine learning infrastructure, recruit senior technical and commercial talent, and enhance its value proposition for both consumers and brands. Phia’s system ingests billions of products and processes millions of searches daily, and recent infrastructure upgrades have cut search latency by 80% while increasing monetized GMV by 40%. The product roadmap includes real-time LLM agents for highly personalized shopping journeys, taste-aware recommendations, individualized rewards, and community-driven digital closets, supported by dashboards that give brand partners real-time visibility into audience behavior, trend formation, and category positioning. Management positions Phia as a category-defining AI commerce platform that translates consumer intent into targeted discovery, reflecting broader investor conviction that AI agents will sit between people and products. With backing from high-profile investors, Phia aims to leverage its owned distribution, large social reach, and proprietary consumer insights to build an end-to-end shopping and discovery layer for the next generation of buyers and brands.