Genius AI, a New York City-based AI platform for in-person service businesses, has raised $44 million in Series D funding at a $1.15 billion valuation. The company, formerly known as GlossGenius, automates booking, payments, client communications, and front-desk operations for salons, med spas, physical therapy practices, and wellness studios. The capital will expand its customer base and develop new agentic products that execute end-to-end administrative work.
Physical Economy Gets AI Operating System
The timing comes amid growing investment in AI tools for local service businesses. Corner Health raised $25 million to build AI-run practices for nurse practitioners. Genius AI's approach centers on autonomous agents that handle repetitive tasks so owners can focus on client-facing work, addressing a gap in back-office automation for smaller operators.
Admin Overhead Drains Service Businesses
Business owners in the space spend nearly 36% of their work week on back-office tasks. The US in-person service economy includes approximately 8 million businesses generating over $2 trillion in annual consumer spending. Current manual processes leave practitioners handling scheduling and payments instead of their core services.
Autonomous Agents Replace Manual Workflows
Genius AI builds systems where the calendar fills itself, payments process automatically, and a virtual receptionist never misses a call. The rebrand from GlossGenius signals a shift beyond beauty and wellness into health-adjacent verticals with HIPAA-compliant features. This differs from narrower tools by aiming for full administrative autonomy rather than point solutions.
As co-founder Danielle Cohen-Shohet noted:
"It's much easier for businesses that are smaller in scale to gather a lot of the context and have AI start to make them much, much more productive."
Lux Capital Backs Unicorn Expansion
Lux Capital led the round with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Imaginary Ventures, 2048 Ventures, L Catterton Growth Fund, and StepStone Private Ventures. The investor mix signals conviction in AI applied to the physical economy, where the company has already saved clients 112 million hours of administrative work and generated over $2 billion in additional revenue for users.
Service Economy Attracts Vertical AI Capital
The platform serves more than 125,000 businesses across half of all US ZIP codes and approaches a $200 million revenue run-rate. Total funding exceeds $125 million. Corner Health's earlier round highlights competition in AI for health-adjacent services, while Genius AI's scale and metrics position it as a broader operating system for local operators.
Twin Founders Bring Princeton Pedigree
Twin sisters Danielle Cohen-Shohet, CEO, and Leah Cohen-Shohet, CBO, founded the company after Danielle taught herself programming to build the initial codebase. Both bring backgrounds from Princeton and Goldman Sachs. The leadership's domain focus on underserved service businesses drove the bootstrapped start in beauty before expanding horizontally.