Twin sisters from Princeton and Goldman Sachs raise $44M at $1.15B valuation for wellness unicorn Genius AI — TFN

• Genius AI, formerly GlossGenius, has raised $44 million in a Series D at a $1.15 billion unicorn valuation, led by Lux Capital, serving more than 125,000 service businesses across half of all US ZIP codes.

• Founded by identical twin sisters Danielle and Leah Cohen-Shohet, both Princeton graduates and former Goldman Sachs analysts, the company is now expanding beyond beauty and wellness into a broader AI platform for the entire in-person service economy.

• The platform says it has saved customers 112 million hours of administrative work and is approaching a $200 million annual revenue run rate, one of the stronger revenue foundations in AI-first vertical SaaS.

Danielle and Leah Cohen-Shohet were freshmen at Princeton when their father was diagnosed with a terminal illness. They finished their degrees, graduated summa cum laude, went to work at Goldman Sachs, and then left finance to build a software company from scratch, Danielle teaching herself to code while running a freelance makeup artistry side hustle, identifying the exact operational problem she would eventually solve. That is the kind of founding story that tends to produce companies with unusual staying power. Genius AI, the company they built, has just raised $44 million in a Series D at a $1.15 billion unicorn valuation.

The round was led by Lux Capital, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Imaginary Ventures, L Catterton Growth, 2048 Ventures, StepStone Private Ventures, and existing investors. Total funding now stands at more than $125 million since the company launched in 2016 as GlossGenius. Alongside the funding, the company has rebranded to Genius AI, reflecting an expansion beyond beauty and wellness into a broader platform for in-person service businesses across all verticals.

From a makeup side hustle to 125,000 businesses

Danielle Cohen-Shohet, now CEO, spotted the problem while working as a freelance makeup artist during her time at Princeton. Salon owners, aestheticians, and wellness professionals were spending a third of every working week on bookings, payments, client communications, and administrative work rather than on their actual craft. She left Goldman Sachs, taught herself full-stack engineering, and built the first version of GlossGenius herself. The platform handles booking, payments, marketing, staffing, and client management in one place, designed specifically for single-operator and multi-location beauty and wellness businesses.

Today, according to the company, more than 125,000 businesses across half of all US ZIP codes run on the platform. Genius AI estimates its products have saved customers 112 million hours of administrative work, helped generate $2 billion in additional revenue, and facilitated more than 624 million client touchpoints. The company is approaching a $200 million annual revenue run rate, a meaningful commercial foundation for a business that has raised a comparatively modest $125 million over nearly a decade.

The agentic shift

The rebranding to Genius AI signals a product shift as much as a marketing one. GlossGenius was a software platform, it gave business owners tools to do things faster. Genius AI’s ambition is to build AI agents that do the work autonomously, completing multi-step business tasks end-to-end rather than assisting with them. 

The company estimates there are roughly 8 million in-person service businesses generating more than $2 trillion in annual spending globally, with owners collectively losing significant portions of every working week to administration. While most AI investment has focused on software developers and knowledge workers, Genius AI is betting the physical service economy represents an equally large and far less digitised opportunity.

“We believe technology in our space will do the opposite of what people fear: not flatten human craft into automation, but free people to be more present, more expressive, and more connected to the people they serve,” said Danielle Cohen-Shohet.

Lux Capita recently closed a $1.5 billion ninth fund – its largest ever – is best known for backing deep tech, defence, and frontier science companies including Anduril and Recursion Pharmaceuticals. Its decision to lead a Series D in a vertical SaaS company serving nail salons and spas reflects either a significant conviction in Genius AI’s agentic AI thesis or a broadening of Lux’s remit, possibly both. Bessemer Venture Partners, which has backed Genius AI across multiple rounds, is the clearest signal of sustained institutional confidence in the team.