New Fund for Women Founders Amidst Funding Plateau

In 2024, female-only founding teams secured just 2.3% of global venture capital, a total of $6.7 billion, despite a decade of increasing success stories and growing interest in women-led enterprises. This stark allocation means that while female founders are actively participating in the market, their ventures receive a disproportionately small share of available funds, hindering their ability to scale and compete effectively in the global marketplace. Persistent undercapitalization of women-led businesses is a systemic challenge within the venture capital funding trends, which impacts innovation and economic growth.

The numbers reveal a profound and persistent disparity. Female-founded companies represented 6.4% of all deals closed in 2024 but received only 2.3% of the total capital, according to Calcalistech. The gap shows that while women are successfully pitching and closing deals, the checks they secure are notably smaller. This discrepancy between the volume of deals and the value of capital suggests an inherent bias in investment sizing, rather than a lack of viable female-led opportunities.

The average deal size for female-only founded companies stood at $5.2 million, less than half the $11.7 million secured by male-only founded companies, according to Calcalistech.com. This persistent gap in average deal size, with female-only founded companies receiving less than half the capital of male-only teams, reveals that the venture capital ecosystem is not just underfunding women, but actively stunting their potential for scaling. The venture capital ecosystem is slowly evolving with targeted initiatives, but without broader systemic changes in funding allocation and investor bias, female founders will likely continue to face significant capital disadvantages, limiting their impact on the 2026 economic landscape and beyond.

The Plateau in European Funding for Women Entrepreneurs

While the global outlook for female-only founding teams remains challenging, regional variations offer a more nuanced picture, though not without their own limitations. Startups founded and co-founded by women accounted for 9.6% of all venture capital raised in Europe in 2023, according to UKTN. This regional figure, while higher than the global 2.3% for female-only teams, includes mixed-gender founding teams, which can obscure the specific challenges faced by all-women teams.

Metric	Trend over Last 10 Years	Implication
Share of VC Investment (Europe, women-founded/co-founded)	Doubled	Indicates significant regional improvement in capital access for diverse teams, though still below parity with male-led ventures.
Number of European Women-Founded Unicorns	Increased 10x (now over 35)	Shows a clear ability for women-led companies to scale successfully and achieve substantial market valuations, proving their commercial viability.

This persistent gap in average deal size reveals that the venture capital ecosystem is not just underfunding women, but actively stunting their potential for scaling. The stark contrast between the 6.4% of deals secured by female-founded companies and the mere 2.3% of capital received indicates that investors are willing to engage but consistently undervalue or de-risk investments in women, perpetuating a cycle of smaller checks and slower growth. Addressing this requires a re-evaluation of investment criteria and a conscious effort to challenge unconscious biases that lead to smaller allocations for female-led ventures. Without a deliberate shift in how these companies are valued and funded, the overall share of capital for female founders will remain critically low, hindering their capacity to innovate and contribute to economic expansion in 2026 and beyond.