TechIreland has released its Female Founder Funding Review 2026 that tracks investment into women-founded startups in 2025. The report shows that last year, 82 Irish women-founded startups fundraised a total of €131m, the highest number of woman-founded startups funded in any year.
Female founder startups raised funding in 2025
Deal size decreased significantly, with the average raise declining to €2.3m in 2025 from €3.9m in 2024. Average funding dropped owing to an increase in the number of deals. However, the median also dropped to just €100k last year, compared to €1.5M in 2024. This indicates that the divide between a group of few very large rounds and that of a large number of very small rounds seems to be widening.
Early Stages
In 2025, there were 36 reported deals of female-led companies raising between €0.1m and €0.3m, compared to eight in 2024. As in previous years, some rounds remained undisclosed. Startups raising €1m – €3m remained steady, with 11 companies raising €18.7m.
Irish female founders have yet again outshined other European peers in raising early-stage funding. While the Dealroom startup ecosystems portal shows a decline in the number of early-stage rounds for women founded startups, the trend in Ireland represents a nearly two-fold increase in the number of rounds raised by women founded startups last year. Thanks to the heavy lifting by Enterprise Ireland through their focused supports for women entrepreneur
Angel networks such as HBAN and AwakenAngels, early-stage accelerator programmes such as Fierce and NextWave, and flagship supports such Enterprise Ireland’s PSSF and HPSU supports among other key programmes continue to play a critical role in building a strong platform for women founders.
Larger rounds
The overall aggregates are skewed by some large outliers as we have noticed in previous years. However, in 2025 we saw just one clear outlier – ProVerum’s €73m raise – significantly driving the overall figure. So, while just one company made nearly half of all funding reported into female founded startups last year, it is an impressive story to celebrate the success of women founders scaling from here in Ireland. There were also mid-sized rounds such as by Lative (€6.4m) and Novus Diagnostics (€4.6m).
Sectoral Focus
Reflecting the strength of our Life Sciences and Healthtech sector, funding into these companies made up nearly 70% of the €131m raised. This trend mirrors that in Europe, where health remains a top sector among female founders. Investment into Enterprise Software, another strong Irish sector, grew significantly to €30.7m raised by 22 companies in 2025 compared to €10.7m by 10 startups in 2024. Overall funding levels into Agri/Food from €3.5m (2024) to €3.9m (2025) and Consumer and E-Commerce grew from €0.4m (2023) to €1.8m (2025), while CleanTech declined at €1.1m. Fintech continued to decline, falling from €72m in 2022, to €4million in 2023 and €2.1m in 2025.
Regional Spread
As in previous years, companies in Dublin dominated the overall figures. 91% of all funding into female founded startups went into Dublin. This can also be attributed to the fact that ProVerum – accounting for nearly half of all funding raised – is a company based in Dublin. The share in funding for the regions outside Dublin dropped from 30% in 2025 to 9% in 2025. This disproportionate decline can be tied back to the fact that the top 5 largest rounds were all raised by startups based in Dublin.
Responding to the report;
Chair of TechIreland, Brian Caulfield said, “2025 was an interesting year for female founders from a fundraising perspective. On the face of it, the numbers held up pretty well. While it’s encouraging to see so many female founded companies raising capital, it’s a concern that the market has bifurcated, a very small number of companies raising large rounds, and a very large number of companies raising very small rounds (largely led by Enterprise Ireland). The mid-market of seed and Series A raises is being hollowed out.”
Further comments on the report’s findings:
Sarah Walker, Startups & Entrepreneurship at Enterprise Ireland said, “The headline TechIreland figure – 82 companies raising in 2025 – is almost double last year and the highest level of activity since 2017 which is cause for celebration. While the increased number of women led and co-founded companies raising is encouraging, TechIreland reports total funding levels of €131m in 2025, down from €145m in 2024, reflecting a challenging funding environment.”
Lorraine Curham, Founder of Fierce said, “For Ireland, the next challenge is what comes after that first cheque. In more mature ecosystems, founders are supported not just by programmes, but by strong networks, investor relationships and ecosystem layers that help companies move from early traction into follow-on capital and scale. Ireland has the pipeline. What it needs next is the infrastructure layer to scale it.”
Sharon Cunningham, Founder, Co-Founder & CEO of Shorla Oncology said, “As a founder who raised capital in 2025, these figures closely reflect what many of us experienced in the market. The drop from €145m in 2024 to €131m in 2025 indicates a decline in overall investment in female-founded companies. However, the fact that 82 companies secured funding compared to 48 the previous year is a very positive development.”
Ríona Ní Ghriallais, Co-Founder & CTO of ProVerum said, “Overall, the report encouragingly tells us that the pipeline of female founders is growing, and that early-stage funding access is improving. However, the concentration of capital in a small number of later-stage deals and the persistent geographic imbalance remain key challenges for the Irish startup ecosystem.”
Please find the report here. More press information,
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