Excluding Two Mega-Deals, Female-Founded Startups’ 2025 VC Gains Shrink to 13%

U.S. venture capital hit a record in 2025: female-founded companies raised $73.6 billion. But a closer look at that headline reveals why the gap persists. Two companies—Anthropic and Scale AI—accounted for over $30 billion of the total. Exclude them and the picture changes: female-founded startups raised just 13% more than the prior year, and all-female founding teams received only 1.1% of venture capital dollars.

The disparity reflects a structural problem in venture funding that goes beyond simple statistics. It is built into how investors allocate capital—both in how many deals women-founded companies get, and how much money goes into each deal. Researchers call this the “double gap.” It operates at every stage of a startup’s life, from seed funding through later rounds. And it persists despite evidence that female-founded companies outperform male-founded startups on returns.

Fewer deals and smaller checks: the double gap explained

When venture capital researchers break down funding by gender, a pattern emerges that explains why percentages remain stuck in single digits. Companies with at least one female founder received 24.1% of deals in 2025, and those same companies captured 27.7% of deal value. All-female teams did worse: they won 6% of all deals but received just 1.1% of capital deployed.

The math reveals why. Female-only founding teams received an average of $4.0 million per deal in 2025, compared with $19.0 million for all-male teams. This gap compounds. Early-stage funding is critical: startups that raise sufficient capital at seed stage have better odds at Series A, and so on. But the funding decline across stages is steeper for female founders. Seed-stage funding for all-female teams was 3.2% of capital. At Series A, it fell to 2.7%. At Series B, it dropped to 2.2%. By Series C and beyond, female teams received just 1.8%.

In raw numbers, this translated to vastly different outcomes in 2025. All-male founding teams raised $191.1 billion across 10,048 deals. All-female teams raised $3.2 billion across 794 deals—about 60 times less capital for roughly 13 times fewer deals. Researchers estimate the funding gap represents a missed economic opportunity of more than $5 trillion globally.

Founding team composition and capital allocation in 2025
All-male teams raised $191.1 billion across 10,048 deals. Companies with at least one female co-founder raised $73.6 billion — 27.7% of total deal value — across 24.1% of all deals. All-female teams raised $3.2 billion across 794 deals, receiving on average $4.0 million per deal versus $19.0 million for all-male teams.

How investor composition shapes funding decisions

The root cause lies in who makes investment decisions. Only 17.3% of VC decision-making roles are held by women, and nearly three-quarters of U.S. VC firms have no female investing partners at all. This composition directly affects capital allocation. Research shows that venture capital firms with at least one female partner are 2.3 times more likely to invest in female founders. Firms with 30% or more female partners invest 4.7 times more in female-founded startups than all-male firms.

Investors rely on pattern-matching: they tend to fund founders who resemble the ones they have already backed. For decades, that meant founders fitting a particular mold. The result is a cycle. Male investors fund male-led companies. Those founders build networks that exclude women. Those networks become the primary channels through which capital flows. Research shows that 82% of venture deals come through warm introductions. A warm introduction from someone a VC partner trusts opens far more doors than a cold email.

Geographic factors reinforce this. Most venture money concentrates in a few regions. Female-founded startups outside those hubs face an additional layer of network disadvantage. Even in places where female-founded activity exists, funding remains volatile. South Florida’s female-founded startup funding dropped from $806 million in 2024 to $478 million in 2025, underperforming national trends.

The bias embedded in investor questions

Inside pitch meetings, different dynamics emerge that reveal investor bias. Research comparing identical pitches given by male and female entrepreneurs found that VCs ask the two groups fundamentally different questions. Female founders are asked prevention-focused questions at roughly 2.3 times the rate of male founders. These are questions about risks, downside protection, and what could go wrong. Male founders receive more promotion-focused questions about growth potential, market size, and upside.

This difference in framing shapes investor judgment and ultimately funding outcomes. Female founders face interruptions at higher rates during pitches, roughly 4.7 times more frequently, which can disrupt their narrative and reduce their perceived competence. In laboratory experiments using identical pitch videos, presentations by female entrepreneurs were rated less favorably than the same content delivered by men.

Yet the performance data contradicts investor caution. Female-founded companies generate 78 cents of revenue per dollar invested, according to Boston Consulting Group research, compared with 31 cents for male-founded startups. The gap between what investors fund and what actually produces returns suggests capital allocation does not follow performance.

Serial founders and the penalty for failure

The double gap extends beyond first-time founders. Women comprise 13.3% of all venture-backed founders, but only 4% of those who go on to found three or more startups. Lower interest among women in founding new firms can only partially explain this pattern, researchers note—it also reflects how investors treat that experience differently.

Research from the National Bureau of Economic Research analyzed outcomes for serial founders and found stark disparities. Following startup failure, women are 22.5% less likely to found another venture-backed startup compared to their male cofounders who experienced the same failure. After success, women serial founders raise 24.6% less capital than men despite demonstrating that their previous company worked.

The study found no evidence that investors were updating their assessments based on founder quality or actual startup performance. Instead, investors exhibit what researchers call “negative spillovers from unrelated women-founded failures.” When a female founder in a VC portfolio fails, it affects how that investor evaluates other female founders in their pipeline, even if those founders are in different industries or sectors. This confirmation bias doesn’t operate similarly for male founders.

Female-founded companies generate 78 cents of revenue per dollar invested, compared with 31 cents for male-founded startups, yet receive checks about a fifth the size of male founders’.

The paradox of female VC backing

Attempting to solve the network problem by directing female founders to female investors creates its own complications. Research on 2,136 startups found that female-founded firms backed exclusively by female investors in their first funding round were two times less likely to raise subsequent investment than female founders backed by male investors.

The reason involves perception bias. When other investors observe a female founder receiving funding from a female VC, they tend to attribute the funding to gender-based favoritism rather than the founder’s merit. In laboratory experiments, female entrepreneurs backed by female investors were “rated less favourably” and “perceived as less competent” despite identical pitch content. The implicit assumption is that the investor supported the founder based on gender, not business potential.

Research identified a solution: female entrepreneurs who receive backing from both male and female investors face no penalty when raising subsequent capital. Diverse investor groups mitigate the stigma effect, suggesting that the path to closing the gap requires changing investor composition rather than directing women to other women.

Programs and structural changes in the market

Efforts to close the gap have multiplied. The Cartier Women’s Initiative provides funding, mentorship, and visibility to mission-driven female founders globally, with prize amounts reaching $100,000. Google for Startups’ Female Founders Programme reaches more than 5,000 women annually across 30 countries. UBS’s Project Entrepreneur accelerator aimed to reach 10,000 female founders by 2025.

Tech Nation research finds that participants in dedicated female-founder programmes are 2.1 times more likely to secure funding within 12 months than non-participants. Some venture funds are experimenting with different investment processes designed to reduce bias. Others are focused on recruiting female partners to their firms, recognizing that investor composition directly affects capital flows.

But even as these initiatives grow and record funding numbers hit headlines, the core statistics have moved slowly. All-female teams’ share of venture capital has remained roughly flat since 2008. At current rates of change, achieving gender parity in venture capital would take until approximately 2065. The double gap persists because it operates through multiple mechanisms simultaneously: networks, investor composition, questioning patterns, and confirmation bias.

Related coverage: All-Female Founding Teams Got Just 1-2% of Venture Capital in 2025.

Photo: NZCoaster · CC0 · via Wikimedia Commons