Phoebe Gates: Career, Net Worth, and Family Life

For someone whose last name carries as much weight as a global tech empire, Phoebe Gates is quietly making a name for herself on her own terms. The youngest daughter of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and philanthropist Melinda French Gates, she graduated from Stanford University in 2024 and immediately jumped into building her own career.

Full Name: Phoebe Adele Gates ·
Born: 2002 ·
Parents: Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates ·
Education: Stanford University (B.S. Human Biology, 2024) ·
Occupation: Co-founder of Phia, Podcast Host ·
Instagram Followers: 603,000+

Seven key data points on Phoebe Gates, pulling together the verified details from her personal, academic, and professional life drawn from sources including Wikipedia and her LinkedIn profile.

What does Phoebe Gates do for a living?

Co-founder of Phia

• She co-founded Phia, an AI-powered sustainable fashion app, alongside her former Stanford roommate Sophia Kianni. The New York Times (a leading U.S. newspaper) described it as a platform that “uses AI to help users make more sustainable wardrobe choices.”
• The app officially launched in April 2025. People magazine reported that Phia aims to reduce fashion waste by encouraging outfit resale and reuse.

Host of The Burnouts podcast

• Phoebe co-hosts The Burnouts, a podcast on the Unwell Network. The show explores digital culture and social trends. Her LinkedIn profile lists her role as co-host from 2024 onward.

Student at Stanford University

• Phoebe studied at Stanford from 2021 to 2024, earning a Bachelor of Science in Human Biology with a minor in African Studies. The Financial Times (an international business publication) noted that she initially planned a pre-med path but shifted her focus to technology and graduated a year ahead of schedule.

Advocate for reproductive rights

• Beyond her startup and media work, Gates is a vocal advocate for reproductive freedom. TechCrunch (a technology news outlet) named her Reproductive Freedom for All’s 2024 Rising Reproductive Freedom Champion. She has also executive produced Everybody’s Fight, a documentary series on reproductive rights.

The pattern: Phoebe Gates is building a multi-hyphenate career that fuses tech entrepreneurship, media, and activism — consciously stepping beyond her family’s shadow to define her own professional identity.

How rich is Phoebe Gates?

Net worth estimates

• Because she is not a public company executive, Phoebe Gates’s exact net worth is not disclosed. Industry estimates typically place her wealth between $10 million and $20 million, drawn from her startup equity, podcast revenue, and paid speaking engagements. No official financial filing confirms this figure.

Inheritance prospects

• As the youngest child of one of the world’s wealthiest people — Bill Gates has a net worth exceeding $130 billion — Phoebe is positioned to inherit a portion of the family’s wealth. However, the specific terms of the Gates family trust remain private.

Family wealth

• The Gates family trust is managed by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates’s investment firm, Cascade Investment. While each child is believed to have access to a significant trust, public reporting on exact allocations is unavailable.

The implication: Phoebe Gates is comfortable but not extravagantly wealthy by her family’s standards. Her active income flows from her own ventures, not a trust fund — a deliberate positioning she has hinted at in interviews.

Is Phoebe Gates in a relationship?

Public relationship status

• As of 2025, Phoebe Gates has not publicly confirmed a romantic relationship. Her social media feeds and public appearances focus entirely on her work, advocacy, and family.

Privacy practices

• She keeps her personal life largely off the record. In an interview with ELLE magazine published in 2025, she discussed her professional ambitions but declined to comment on her private relationships. No credible reports link her to a known partner.

The trade-off: By keeping her romantic life private, Gates avoids the tabloid scrutiny that often follows celebrity children. The downside is that public curiosity runs rampant — making her one of the most googled private figures in the Gates family.

Which Gates’ daughter is a doctor?

Jennifer Gates’s medical career

• The eldest Gates daughter, Jennifer Gates, is a medical doctor. She earned her MD from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and specializes in pediatrics. She is currently a practicing physician in New York City.

Sibling roles

• Phoebe and her older sister, Rory Gates, are not doctors. Rory is known to be pursuing a graduate degree in law or policy, though her specific career path is kept more private than Jennifer’s. Jennifer is married to professional equestrian Nayel Nassar.

What this means: The Gates children have taken three very different paths — medicine, law/policy, and tech/media. Phoebe is the only sibling actively building a consumer-facing brand under her own name.

Do Bill Gates’ children talk to him?

Post-divorce relationship

• After Bill and Melinda French Gates announced their divorce in 2021, questions naturally arose about family dynamics. Bill Gates has publicly stated that he maintains a close relationship with all three of his children.

Public statements by Bill Gates

• In a 2022 interview, Bill Gates said: “We talk all the time. They are great kids.” He has also shared that the family spends holidays together and that the divorce has not caused a rift. No public evidence contradicts this — though the family’s internal conversations remain private.

The verdict: By all outward evidence, the Gates children remain a tight-knit family. The divorce did not fracture the parent-child relationship. For Phoebe, having her father’s support has likely opened doors, but she insists her career stands on its own merits.

Clarity: separating confirmed facts from open questions

The pattern: The confirmed facts about Phoebe Gates center on her education, entrepreneurship, and advocacy, while her net worth, relationship status, and inheritance details remain unconfirmed by primary sources.

Quotes and Perspectives

“I wanted to make shopping more sustainable and transparent.”

— Phoebe Gates in ELLE, 2025

“We talk all the time. They are great kids.”

— Bill Gates, 2022 interview

The editorial takeaway: One quote is from the subject herself, framing her work. The other is her father offering a rare glimpse into the family dynamic. Together, they present two facets of Phoebe Gates’s world: the professional independence she is forging, and the family foundation she works within.

For the average observer, Phoebe Gates represents a new kind of billionaire offspring: one who builds a public platform around values rather than inherited status. For the Gen Z consumers who make up her target audience, the choice is clear — they can support her sustainable fashion venture Phia, or watch from the sidelines as she defines what the next generation of influence looks like.

Frequently asked questions

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