My colleague Allie Garfinkle has the exclusive this morning on Phia, the fashion tech startup cofounded by Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni. The company has raised an $8 million seed round, with investors including Hailey Bieber, Kris Jenner, Sheryl Sandberg, Spanx’s Sara Blakely, and Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin. Kleiner Perkins led the round.
The founders are well-connected; Gates is the daughter of Bill and Melinda, and the pair already interviewed Jenner on their podcast The Burnouts with Alex Cooper’s Unwell Network.
Phia is one of a new crop of startups using AI to innovate in fashion tech, from AI stylist Alta to AI shopping platform Daydream. Says Kianni: “I think there’s been so little innovation in the shopping space for so long because it seems like ‘well, that’s a hobby for girls.’ The reality is that the fashion industry is worth between $1.7 and $2.5 trillion.”
When Phia launched earlier this year, Gates told me that its “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.”
Read more on the round here.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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