The pipeline is growing

219 companies is a 44% increase from 2024, when we tracked 152. Women-only founding teams held a steady 26% of the total ecosystem — the same proportion as the year before, even as the overall market grew. That's not a coincidence. The founders are here. They've been here.

€707M raised — but context matters

Total funding across the dataset reached €707M. That's a significant number, and it represents real companies building real things — in BioTech, ClimateTech, DeepTech, FoodTech and beyond. But when you break it down by team type, women-only founding teams raised €73M of that total. Mixed-gender teams raised €553M. Women-only founders represent 26% of the pipeline and accessed 10% of the capital.

The gap is not what you think

Here's the part that surprised even us. When you compare women-only and mixed-gender teams at the same funding stage, the gap is under 10%. At pre-seed, women-only founders actually raised more. The overall gap — 2.8× on average — is not a valuation problem. It is a stage access problem. Women-only founders are concentrated at the grant and pre-seed stages, while mixed teams progress to Seed and Series A, where the larger rounds happen. The barrier is not in the room. It's in who gets invited into the room in the first place.

What's being built

The sectors tell a story. BioTech leads by deal count (29 companies). ClimateTech and DeepTech lead by capital intensity. FemTech has the highest concentration of women-only founding teams of any sector — 8 of 10 FemTech companies in the 2025 dataset are women-only founded.

These are not niche interests. These are the sectors European industrial policy is betting billions on.

The full Funded! 2025 report is available at evenfounders.com.