When Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni met as Stanford roommates in 2020, they bonded over a shared frustration: shopping online was broken. Not broken in the way that crashes servers or loses data — broken in the way that wastes hours of human life. Two women with identical taste profiles would land on the same retailer’s website and have the exact same experience. No personalization. No intelligence. No fun. Three years later, that frustration has become Phia — an AI-powered shopping platform that just closed a $35.5 million Series A round at a $185.5 million valuation, making it one of the most celebrity-backed consumer startups in Silicon Valley history. The investor roster reads like a Met Gala guest list: Khloé Kardashian, Paris Hilton, Priyanka Chopra, Sydney Sweeney, Mindy Kaling, Ice Spice, and LVMH scion Alexandre Arnault, alongside tech heavyweights like OpenAI’s Charles Porch, Robinhood founder Vladimir Tenev, and Venmo founder Iqram...