Funding for women-founded startups in Europe is on the move.
The numbers are climbing, new funds are popping up, and capital is starting to flow into sectors that once felt out of reach for women founders — think semiconductors, robotics, and quantum computing.
It marks a real shift in the European tech ecosystem.
But there is a detail that cannot be overlooked: even with all this progress, all-women teams still account for just 1% of total deal value this year.
That is down from the 1.3% recorded in the previous period.
So yes, the momentum is there, but the slice of the pie is still tiny.
Receive the best innovation content in your email.
All the news, tips, trends, and resources you're looking for, delivered to your inbox.
By subscribing to the newsletter, you agree to receive communications from Método Viral. We are committed to always protecting and respecting your privacy.
And it is precisely this tension between growth and real representation that makes this moment so important to watch.
In this article, we dig into the latest PitchBook data on funding for women-founded startups in Europe, explore the growing role of artificial intelligence in this ecosystem, and discuss what still needs to change for inclusion to stop being a talking point and start becoming reality. 🚀
What the PitchBook data is telling us
PitchBook is one of the leading sources of data on venture capital and private equity worldwide, and their most recent report on the European ecosystem paints a picture that blends optimism with raw reality. On the bright side, a fresh wave of venture capital funds is betting on women founders, and several European funds have been closed or launched specifically to support women entrepreneurs in tech. According to PitchBook, these women-focused funds have been stacking up throughout the year, precisely because women-founded startups are attracting more capital than before.
This growth is more than just symbolic. It reflects a shift in mindset among institutional investors and fund managers who have come to see founder diversity as a performance driver, not just a social responsibility checkbox. Total deal value has already reached roughly 9.7 billion euros this year, according to PitchBook’s European female founders dashboard — nearly matching the total logged in the prior year. At the current pace, this period is on track to become the third-best year for women founders in terms of capital raised, even though the number of deals will likely fall short of the previous count, mirroring a broader trend across the European market.
Still, when you look at the raw numbers for capital allocation, the picture shifts in tone. All-women teams received just 1% of total deal value recorded, a drop from 1.3% in the previous period. That means even though the volume of deals involving women founders is growing, the average round size reaching them is still significantly smaller than what goes to all-male or mixed teams. The disparity is nothing new, but the fact that it actually regressed during a period of supposed progress is a major red flag for anyone following this space closely. The money is moving, but not necessarily in the right direction when it comes to equity.
The data on mixed teams — those combining men and women founders — is the most encouraging part of this snapshot. These teams saw a slight uptick, climbing to 16.3% compared to 15% in the previous period, although they still remain below the levels seen in years past. They have managed to access larger rounds across more diverse sectors, including cutting-edge tech areas that historically shut women out, such as semiconductors, quantum computing, and advanced robotics. This suggests the market is starting to recognize women in technical and strategic leadership roles, even if the pace is still gradual. The challenge, then, goes beyond simply getting more women into startups. The core issue is making sure these founders have access to the same level of capital as their male counterparts, regardless of team composition.
Artificial intelligence as both gateway and battleground
Artificial intelligence has become the hottest sector in the global startup ecosystem, and Europe is no exception. What stands out, though, is that AI is also becoming one of the main funding drivers for women entrepreneurs on the continent. Startups led by women founders working in generative AI, language models, intelligent automation, and vertical machine learning applications have been landing significant rounds — especially when they bring clear use cases in healthcare, education, legal, and finance. These sectors combine high demand for smart solutions with a user base that values diversity of perspective in product development, which creates a natural opening for founders who bring a differentiated vision.
One point that PitchBook itself highlights in recent reports is how AI is reshaping cybersecurity. The technology has changed the speed at which threats emerge and how fast organizations need to respond. Attackers can use AI tools to map targets, automate breaches, and generate convincing digital deceptions. And spending on cybersecurity continues to grow faster than global GDP. According to PitchBook, AI has become both a driver of new cyber risks and a lasting source of long-term market opportunities. It is no surprise, then, that AI-native cybersecurity accounted for 50.5% of global venture capital deals in cybersecurity during the report’s reference year.
As AI becomes more accessible through public interfaces and online services, the range of vulnerable systems expands across software, data, and supply chains. Security teams are responding by adopting AI-native platforms capable of learning normal behavior across identity, cloud, and network environments — generating their own insights rather than relying solely on pre-set rules or signatures. This shift opens the door for new companies to emerge, and many of them could be led by founders with sharp technical vision.
But AI also represents a field of tension. Access to quality data, computing power, and research networks is still uneven, and that directly affects the ability of smaller startups — many of them led by women — to compete on a level playing field with players that have more resources from the start. On top of that, AI models themselves carry historical biases that, if left uncorrected, can reproduce patterns of exclusion inside tools that were supposed to democratize access. In other words, without a thoughtful approach to development, artificial intelligence can either widen or narrow the inclusion gaps that exist today in the tech ecosystem.
What makes this moment particularly strategic is that we are still in the early stages of market consolidation in AI. The foundations being laid right now — in terms of who leads the companies, who builds the models, and who has access to the capital to scale — will define how this sector is structured for decades. That is why ensuring women founders have real space in this market is not just a matter of fairness. It is a strategic decision with a direct impact on the quality, diversity, and applicability of the products that will hit the market in the coming years. 🤖
What still needs to change for inclusion to become reality
Talking about inclusion in the tech startup ecosystem is easy. Putting it into practice demands structural changes that go far beyond launching a dedicated fund or publishing diversity targets in an annual report. The first thing that needs to evolve is the makeup of venture capital funds themselves. Consistent research shows that investors tend to fund founders who look like them — in terms of background, education, and professional networks. As long as the majority of partners at European funds are men with similar profiles, capital will keep flowing along historical patterns, regardless of the good intentions stated publicly. Changing this requires hiring more women into decision-making roles within the funds themselves, which is still happening at a slow and timid pace across the continent.
Another critical factor is access to dealflow networks. A large share of the most significant funding rounds happen through personal connections, introductions made by other founders or investors, and attendance at high-level closed-door events. Women founders — especially those building their first companies — often lack organic access to these networks, which creates a structural disadvantage right from the start. Initiatives that actively build bridges between women entrepreneurs and investors, such as accelerator programs with qualified networking components and mentorships with senior executives, have shown concrete results in boosting both the volume and quality of rounds accessed by teams with women founders.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the narrative around startups founded by women needs to evolve. For a long time, the inclusion conversation was built almost entirely around the social angle — which, while absolutely legitimate, ended up creating a misguided perception that investing in women entrepreneurs was an act of responsibility rather than a smart business decision. The data tells a different story: diverse teams perform better, make more robust decisions, and build products with greater long-term market potential. When that narrative becomes the standard — and not the exception — the funding landscape for women-founded startups will shift far more quickly and structurally than any one-off initiative could ever achieve on its own. 💡
Europe as a testing ground for a new model
The European ecosystem has unique characteristics that make it particularly fertile ground for testing new models of funding and inclusion. Stricter regulations around data and privacy, a more structured corporate governance culture, and the diversity of markets within the continent itself create an environment where more responsible investment practices have more room to take hold than in other ecosystems. On top of that, growing pressure from LPs — the investors who allocate capital into VC funds — for diversity and impact metrics is pushing fund managers to make more conscious decisions about who receives capital and why. That does not fix everything, but it creates real incentives for behavioral change within the market.
The very wave of funds dedicated to women entrepreneurs, highlighted by PitchBook, shows that it is possible to build high-performance portfolios while prioritizing teams with women founders. The challenge now is scaling that model, attracting more institutional capital to these vehicles, and making sure the best practices identified in these experiments become benchmarks for the broader market. Europe has the opportunity to position itself as a global reference for a startup funding model that combines performance with real diversity — and the coming years will reveal whether that potential translates into concrete results or stays stuck in rhetoric. 🌍
At the end of the day, the data makes it clear that the road is being paved, but there is still a long way to go. The growth in capital flowing to women founders is encouraging news, especially with expansion into deep-tech areas and the ever-growing strength of artificial intelligence. But real representation goes far beyond rising numbers. It depends on deep changes in who makes decisions, how capital circulates, and the way society views the role of women in innovation. And keeping a close eye on this transformation is essential for understanding where the European tech ecosystem is headed in the years to come. 💜
