Sophia Kianni built Phia from a Stanford dorm room. The AI shopping assistant now serves over a million users and carries a $185 million valuation after a $35 million Series A. Yet the 24-year-old co-founder keeps circling back to one point. Creativity and ingenuity will always come from a person.
Kianni spoke with CNBC Make It in late June. She called creativity the top human quality AI cannot replace. CNBC reported her exact words: “Creativity and ingenuity [are] always going to come from a person.”
She runs content teams at Phia and on the duo’s podcast, The Burnouts. AI handles data pulls and performance tracking. That frees people to brainstorm fresh angles. Kianni wants her staff “to stay in their zone of genius.”
The distinction matters. AI remixes existing material. Humans picture what has not existed yet. LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky and Chief Economic Opportunity Officer Aneesh Raman made the same case earlier this year. They listed creativity among five skills AI cannot take over. CNBC
Phia itself shows the pattern. The app scans hundreds of millions of items, compares prices, and surfaces secondhand options. It automates the grind. The original idea, the product vision, and the brand voice still trace back to the founders and their small team.
Phia’s rapid rise and the limits of automation
Phoebe Gates and Kianni launched the app in April 2025. By early 2026 the company had raised $43 million total, added celebrity backers such as Kris Jenner, Hailey Bieber, and Khloé Kardashian, and reached 1.5 million users. TechCrunch covered the Series A. Revenue has grown elevenfold since launch. Return rates fell. Customer satisfaction rose.
The founders credit AI for handling tedious tasks. Yet they built their own search index instead of relying solely on third-party models. Latency dropped 80 percent. Accuracy improved. GMV monetized through the platform climbed 40 percent. Those engineering choices required human judgment about what the business actually needed.
Kianni also points to audience building. The Burnouts podcast now reaches more than 900,000 followers. Sharing the real-time process of starting a company creates loyalty that generic AI output rarely matches. Authenticity draws investors and users who feel they are part of the story.
Other voices echo the same view. Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu told CNBC in mid-June that machines can handle routine work so people can focus on being creative. CNBC Adobe’s 2026 Creators’ Toolkit Report found three-quarters of digital creators call AI essential, yet the same survey shows most credit it with boosting confidence rather than replacing their core ideas.
High-agency teams and the future of work
Kianni’s co-founder Gates made a related observation at SXSW. People with high agency will use AI to do more, not less. They offload manual work and keep the strategic and inventive parts for themselves. CNBC
Recent commentary on X reinforces the point. One post from June noted that lived experience and personal perspective still separate human writing from machine output even when both reach similar technical quality. Another thread highlighted agency as the factor that prevents AI from eroding purpose.
Phia’s own hiring posts stress the same standard. The company seeks “high-agency, insanely talented, deeply obsessed builders.” Small teams of that caliber, augmented by AI, can outperform larger groups stuck in repetitive workflows.
Broader research supports the pattern. A March 2026 KevinMD piece argued that AI avatars in healthcare deliver scripted responses while human clinicians adapt in real time with warmth that algorithms lack. KevinMD A June 2026 Wiley article examined how heavy AI use can blunt critical thinking, creativity, and empathy unless balanced by intentional human practice.
Kianni’s stance fits a consistent thread across founder interviews and industry reports. AI scales execution. It does not originate the spark. Companies that treat the tool as an accelerator rather than a substitute keep the advantage that only people supply.
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