Twin Founders Of Genius AI Raise Series D Funding, Valued At $1.15 Billion

Danielle and Leah Cohen-Shohet, founders of Genius AI

Genius AI

Danielle and Leah Cohen-Shohet, co-founders and twin sisters behind Genius AI, have just raised $44 million in Series D funding, boosting them to unicorn status. I spoke with the pair to understand how they grew GlossGenius, a salon booking and payments platform, into Genius AI – now valued at $1.15 billion.

Before becoming one half of the latest female-founded unicorn company, Danielle Cohen-Shohet, co-founder and CEO at Genius AI, worked as an analyst at Goldman Sachs with her twin sister Leah, Genius AI’s chief business officer. The idea for GlossGenius, their flagship product, started from a frustration with tedious and time-consuming admin, coupled with a passion for beauty.

“The problem is personal for us,” Danielle told me. “We grew up watching our dad run a medical practice. He was deeply passionate about his work, but always spent nights and weekends handling tasks he didn’t love – reviewing the books, charting, patient follow-ups, and ads in the phonebook.

“In college, we started a venture focused on digitizing receipts at the point of sale, which sparked our interest in payments. At the same time, my technical background and interest in the beauty industry led us to see an opportunity to build a software and payments platform for beauty professionals,” she said.

The twin founders have come a long way from building a product in their college days. Genius AI, the new brand name for the business, has raised more than $125 million in capital. The latest funding round was led by Lux Capital, with additional investment from Bessemer Venture Partners, Imaginary Ventures, L Catterton Growth, 2048 Ventures, StepStone Private Ventures, and others.

Now, Genius AI bills itself as a technology platform for in-person service businesses, and has reached a $1.15 billion valuation.

“Service professionals are among the most skilled and entrepreneurial people in the economy, yet many are still held back by fragmented systems and hours of administrative work,” said Danielle.

“We built GlossGenius to give beauty and wellness professionals more time to focus on their clients and their craft. As we grew, it became clear that the same challenge exists across the broader service economy,” she said.

Yet they’re not the only providers in the market. Operators like Phorest, Vagaro, Mindbody, and even owned websites allow beauty professionals to organize their bookings, collect payments, and manage clients, some with a more affordable price point. According to the founders, the key differentiator of GlossGenius is that they’re built for the practitioner. “We build their brand, not ours. We’re not a marketplace,” Leah told me.

“We win when they win, and our pricing is designed to offer them the most value,” she added.

Scale and growth has been a top strategic focus for the founders. They say they serve more than 125,000 businesses on the platform, across half of all US zip codes. “We were able to bootstrap initially because we had a maniacal focus on solving real problems for customers with efficient unit economics,” Leah said.

“One of the challenges we had starting out was with getting business owners to trust technology with their most important relationships. That was why so many were on pen and paper at the time. Businesses were able to see the value in time they could save and spend on their clients, which helped us build trust,” she explained.

Now, with their additional $44 million in funding, they plan on expanding their product and customer base.

While the team is expanding their reach beyond the beauty treatment booking platform, seeing the strong opportunity AI offers to capture a larger piece of the wider service industry, they maintain that the mission of their business is still human-led. “I’ve spoken to tens of thousands of customers and business owners, and they all share the same dream: to spend more time doing the work they love. A practitioner’s hands-on expertise, judgment, and connection with a client can’t be automated. But AI can handle many of the tasks that pull them away from those moments,” Danielle said.

For founders looking to raise capital, she shared her advice: “Be clear about what the capital will allow you to prove. Raise against specific milestones, choose investors who share your long-term view, and don’t let the availability of capital substitute for focus.”

For business owners building AI products right now, Danielle advised to choose a problem for the customer that truly matters, and earn the trust required to solve more of that problem over time.

“Pick the two or three questions on which the company lives or dies, and refuse to let your answers come from anyone but the raw source. Your model of the business can never be secondhand.”