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 second-hand sellers to help customers find a better price.

That's actually a neat premise. Fashion isn't my cup of tea, but otherwise that sounds useful (albeit not very unique; shopping assistants are a dime a dozen).

Wonder how much of her funding came from people who rape kids with her dad...

If she thinks she's doing anything that her name doesn't benefit, she's fucking stupider than most AI ceos and that's saying a lot.

Maybe even stupid enough to not know the reason her dad's company took off is her grandparents worked for Xerox and just gave him a bunch of IP including the first computer mouse and a shit ton of money.

The Gates family is a nepo family, they're just all too stupid to understand and legitimately think they have the same opportunities as anyone else.

So it’s a price checker extension. That scrapes other websites for better deals.

I feel like this is just a plug piece to spotlight her product tbh.

What's crazier is people thinking it's a good enough idea to get $185,000,000 in funding for someone who just graduated college...

Like, it already exists, there's a bunch of those already.

She slapped "AI" on the front of it but because her name is Gates people won't stop throwing money at it. If she doesn't understand her name is why she's getting funding, that just means she's both ignorant and naive and this is an even worse investment and product than it seems on the surface.

I’m sure the Gates named helped, but AI anything has venture capitalists punching the Fry meme. It feels very similar to the dot com era bubble in a macro sense, except without a large number jobs being created.

Is this the same entitled bitch who got a $1,000,000 ranch as a present?

Maybe pay some fucking taxes, Phoebe.

They just slap the word AI on it so investors pp's become the big pp.

My little brother works for a supply company, and one of the companies they supply has a new 'AI' tool where folks type in the thing they want and it pulls from other companies to find the lowest price, then color codes it and shit. The supply companies have to put their prices in a database for the 'AI'. All I could think hearing about it is that some C level got absolutely fucking bamboozled.

Shareholders will expect their 185 million to turn into more. Someone will have to pay for this “more.” The business model will therefore boil down to either selling user data or companies paying to be given preferential treatment by the system. Probably both.

Furthermore, such services do not create any added value for the economy because, like advertising, they merely ensure that money is spent at B instead of at A. They are not productive and can be used much more efficiently by the bigger players.

Think of how stupid the average AI CEO is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

Relevant:

"Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something.

Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on.

Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good about themselves. Some keep going until they hit the center bullseye, then they give speeches or write blog posts about "meritocracy" and the salutary effects of hard work.

Poor kids aren't visiting the carnival. They're the ones working it."

no ties to my privilege

it's an AI startup

$185 million

Something does not compute, in a Microslop sort of way.

Guaranteed it’s going down the route of:

“Want your store at the top. We can make that happen” nudge, nudge

But it feels so damned blatant for the grift that it is. The “It’s not about my name” is very blinkered view to take.

If a random 23 year old can just take any type of plugin that's been around 20+ years, slap AI in front of it...

And raises $185,000,000...

Why exactly do you think they're not all doing it?

Thats a rhetorical question by the way, the rest of them aren't doing it because their last name isn't Gates so it wouldn't work

We already know how things like that can be monetized - just look at the Honey scandal. You rip off both users and business customers... But this time with AI.

What a novel idea, Phoebe. Such Innovation, much wow!

An "AI shopping company". Yes, that´s just what the world needs.

I asked copilot and it assured me this is all above board.

Please no. My crushing despair at the state of the world meds for ignore at least one thing

Raised in a bubble she can't see.

I have no doubt she's at least as horrible as we all imagine.

Yup. Price comparison extensions have been around for decades already.

That’s not right economically. If you were going to spend $200 at store B and now spend $150 at store A, that’s an efficiency of $50. You’re saying that looking for deals isn’t a market benefit, and it absolutely is. Now, their cut of it is of no benefit, and fuck AI. But the service is productive.

"I have a chip on my shoulder" nice.

If you ever listen to Behind the Bastards, then you’ll notice a pattern of emotional stunting in the growth of billionaires. The kids that have the money straight away, not the ones that really do make it themselves wherever they are.

Exemplar: Elon.

Though the imagery that sticks out in my mind is one of Zuckerberg playing mall ninja in his original office space, as the boss, walking around with a samurai sword and fake swiping at employees with it.

I can't even decide what would be worse: AI-based shopping of general stuff, or shopping for AIs.

Oh, I 100% agree. I test installed the app, and it seems to be some of both (behavior tracking with a Safari extension, and store sponsorship).

That being said, I hate store monocultures even more, like how Amazon/Walmart can bully their suppliers through sheer critical mass and shoppers don’t even look anywhere else. That’s economic inefficiency. Price aggregators are a good thing.

Ah yes, I remember a browser extension about finding coupon codes for the sites you're on that absolutely didn't end up being disgusting shit. 🤣

There are a million of these out there. Most of them suck. Many are, at best, ethically gray. Even the better ones spy on you in a hundred different ways.

I'd love something that actually didn't suck, but "185 million dollar AI startup" doesn't sound promising to me.

The big problem with the concept is that there's money to be made by gaming the system and nobody is good at that cat and mouse game. AI could theoretically help, but let's be real: it's just going to scrape the same 100 identical Amazon referral listicles you'd get in a Google search, with an extra sprinkling of ads.

But then the seller is missing out on those $50, which they can't spend anywhere else. From an macroeconomic perspective, the effect is zero. Like advertising, it only serves to allocate resources, not to create value. What's more, it's mainly large companies that benefit from something like this. Firstly, because of scale effects, and secondly, because they can sustain price dumping for longer than smaller companies.

The same applies to deals. You only benefit from them because someone else is disadvantaged. Unless, of course, you assume that companies have something to give away out of kindness. And, of course, you yourself have been someone who has given someone else an advantage at your own disadvantage. You paid more so that someone else could pay less. The macroeconomic effect was zero because no value was created.

None of them make it themselves...

But they act like spoiled kids because that's how everyone treats them, because at that level of wealth the only people you're around will say whatever gets you to give them money.

It doesn't take long before they forget how to be a normal human

I think there is a huge market for an AI agent that will shop for the best deals for you. They could check for coupons, discount codes, etc...

To quote Pearl Jam:

Born on third,

Thinks (s)he got a triple.

Where does the AI come into the picture though?

Honey didn't just rip off business customers. It ripped off unrelated businesses too.

Well if AI doesn't have to be artificial intelligence, I guess it doesn't matter

People who talk to you like an AI bot. Maybe that’s why the AI talks that way. It’s all they know.

In the two days before it gets undermined by entrenched interests, yeah could be neat.

Anyone here old enough to remember froogle?

Ehhhh. Bah! I’m gonna take a nap.

And then the AI will just make up the discounts and coupon codes. What you really want is a simple, tuned search engine, like we've had for 30 years. Not generated content.

some C level got absolutely fucking bamboozled.

That’s all they’re for. The last time I heard any executive actually make a good decision - or even anything in the neighborhood of a good decision - was . . . Ummmm. Well, I’m sure it was sometime this century. ? Maybe.

To be fair to whoever she is, it must have been impossible for them to not to have grown up completely bonkers out of touch. Not without some serious awesome parenting.

Which is why she did not.

She's going to be another super villain in ten years isn't she

Never thought of that, but yeah...

Especially for Elon, it's not just people in person, he bought twitter just to have his own echo chamber

When grok constantly glazes him, that's what he thinks a normal person acts like. If it acts like a human would, Elmo can't recognize it.

What an awesome comparison.

Please tell me this is a satirical nod towards Honey & Co.

Pay your taxes or shut up.

This is fucking worse than monarchy.

Reading this, I was reminded of how Nicolas Cage is part of the Coppola family but changed his name, I was told, so that he could “make it on his own.”

I looked that up and it turns out to be a complete lie. He actually changed his name to conceal the fact that he was not making it on his own.

EDIT to clarify if this was confusing: he was given roles by his uncle Francis Ford Coppola. This is nepotism aka “not making it on his own,” but with special help from family. To conceal the nepotism, his name was changed.

From Wikipedia:

At age 15, he tried to convince his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola, to give him a screen test, telling him "I'll show you acting." His outburst was met with "silence in the car."[20] By this stage of his career, Coppola had already directed Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Gene Hackman and Robert De Niro. Although early in his career Cage appeared in some of his uncle's films, he changed his name to Nicolas Cage to avoid the appearance of nepotism as Coppola's nephew. His choice of name was inspired by the Marvel Comicssuperhero Luke Cage and composer John Cage.[21][22]

She just wants to be treated like any other totally unqualified person whose mom gave her commencement speed and got handed 100 million dollars to start up a made up company.

how does changing his famous last name conceal that he was not making it on his own? what?

“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 ...[T]he 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.

I appreciate the sentiment, but it would be delusional to think her ability to "win over private equity" was divorced at all from her father's legacy and last name. And actually, I'm not sure I appreciate the sentiment. In 2026, merit is way down the list, like scrawled sideways in the margins, of things that matter to private equity.

"To avoid the appearance of nepotism" sounds exactly like making it his own. You seem to have misunderstood. Are you an LLM?