Women in the world of venture capital made progress last year, but there’s still a wide gap between the financing obtained by companies that are founded by women versus those founded by men. Ahead of International Women’s Day, data firm Pitchbook on 6 March 2025 released its , which highlights details on the subject.
“Female founders made gains in 2024 but still represent less than a quarter of the broader European VC landscape,” wrote senior analyst Annemarie Donegan in the report. “A significant disparity remains between the venture capital invested in all-male founding teams and that allocated to teams with female founders, with the gap widening further for all-female founding teams. However, increasing deal activity in recent years suggests growing investor openness to female-led companies, reflected in their expanding share of total VC transactions.”
VC deal value for female-founded companies increased a bit from €10bn in 2023 to €10.2bn in 2024. That accounted for 20.6% of all VC deal activity (up from 18.8% the previous year).
The number of deals, however, dropped from 2,626 deals in 2023 to 1,937 in 2024. For Pitchbook, this decrease highlights a shift towards fewer but larger transactions. VC deal count for female-founded companies accounted for 24.7% of all deals in Europe, a drop from 26.1% the year before.
Companies whose founding teams are made up of all women raised €814.6m in 2024, rising 7.4% year-on-year from €758.8m in 2023. Despite this increase, the deal value for all-female-founded companies was dwarfed by the deal value for all-male-founded companies (€38.3bn).
By industry
Female founders in the “personal products” sector hold more than half of the industry’s total VC deal count, said the Pitchbook report, coming in at 65.9% in 2024.
The “therapeutic devices” industry was the only one to record growth in the number of deals in 2024, with deal count up 22.2% compared to the previous year. The sectors of media & information services and financial software, on the other hand, saw drops of more than 41%.
Estonia: top ranked for deal count per capita
The United Kingdom was--by far--the European country that had the highest deal count for female-founded companies, with 653 deals in 2024. France and Germany complete the podium, coming in second and third place. The Nordic countries--Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway--were also well-represented last year. Estonia, which has a population of 1.37m people, ranked first when it comes to deal count per capita. The country saw 24 deals in 2024.
Exits increased in 2024
“Female-founded companies made material exit gains in 2024,” said Pitchbook. Both the number of transactions and cumulative value saw double-digit growth year-on-year. Exit value increased from €6.1bn in 2023 to €8bn in 2024; exit count climbed from 152 in 2023 to 170 in 2024. The data firm noted that VC exit activity for female-founded companies as a share of all VC exit activity stood at a record high last year: 21.5%.
15% of decision-makers are women
In 2024, women represented just 15% of decision-makers at VC firms with over €50m in assets under management, said the report. That’s down a bit from 15.2% in 2023. Amongst smaller VC firms--those that have less than €50m in assets under management--12.3% of decision-makers were women in 2024 (up from 11.4% in 2023).
The number of female angel investors active in European VC deals dropped to its lowest level since 2018, added Donegan. There were 182 unique active female angel investors in 2024, down from 303 in 2023 and 495 in 2022. “Female angel investors took a step back from cheque writing in 2024 as risk appetites waned. Increasing female representation in these roles could help drive investment in female-founded startups by expanding access and opportunities for founders who may otherwise be overlooked.”