Bill Gates’ daughter Phoebe launched a shopping app

Phoebe Gates, the daughter of Bill and Melinda Gates, has launched an AI shopping app with former roommate Sophia Kianni, The New York Times reports. The app, called Phia, is designed to help shoppers compare prices on listings of clothing, shoes, and accessories. It’s available on iOS and as a browser extension for Google Chrome. Once you install the app or extension, a “Should I Buy This?” button will appear when you land on a product page. Click the button, and Phia will scour the web to compare prices to new and used listings of the same and similar items before telling you whether the price is high, low, or typical. I tried it out for myself by heading to the product page for Louis Vuitton’s $1,950 Graceful PM bag. Phia told me it’s “worth the price,” and showed me secondhand options from Fashionphile and eBay, starting at $1,453. It also provided a link to Phia’s website, where I could compare it to similar – but cheaper – second hand bags from across the internet. [Image: Phia compared the price to Fashionphile and eBay. https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/phia-lv-bag.png?quality=90&strip=all] Phia says it uses AI to analyze “current market trends” and compare them against a database of more than 250 million used goods from sites like The RealReal, Vestiaire Collective, ThredUp, StockX, eBay, and Poshmark. There are several other apps out there, like Capital One Shopping, Rakuten, and Honey (which has since been accused of ripping off customers and the creators who promote it), that try to save you money by comparing prices and automatically applying coupon codes. But it seems Phia is attempting to make itself stand out by focusing on fashion and putting an emphasis on thrifting as well.