10 European funding vehicles dedicated to women founders

Europe’s startup ecosystem has a stubborn funding problem. Women are building companies, but investment is still overwhelmingly flowing elsewhere.

However, a 2026 study has shown that in 2025, all-female founding teams received just 2.5% of equity investment in Europe, while mixed-gender teams received less than 10%, meaning the vast majority (~87.5%) is directed to male-founded companies.

The figures expose a gap that goes far beyond representation, raising questions about who gets access to capital, which ideas get the chance to scale, and how much potential Europe is leaving untapped.

Against this backdrop, a growing number of venture capital funds across Europe are building investment strategies specifically around women founders and more diverse founding teams. Some have explicit eligibility requirements, such as a minimum percentage of founder equity held by women, while others make women founders a central part of a broader diversity or impact mandate.

Here are 10 European funding vehicles with a stated focus on women founders and diverse teams.

Arāya Ventures and Sie Ventures (London, UK)

Sie Ventures and Arāya Ventures collaborated to create the Arāya Sie Fund, backing the next generation of women-led technology startups across the UK and Europe.

The investment mandate focuses on pre-Seed and Seed-stage companies working in areas including AI, DeepTech, FinTech, healthcare and sustainability. Unlike some funds on this list, there is not a specific minimum percentage of founder equity that must be held by women.

To qualify, startups must: be building a scalable, venture-backable and defensible business; be launched or in active Beta; have a founding team with at least one co-founder who is a woman; and offer a tech-enabled product or service via mobile or web, or hold patentable technology.

The Auxxo Female Catalyst Fund has one of the clearest women-founder eligibility criteria in the European market.

The fund invests exclusively in European startups with at least one woman founder holding a minimum of 20% of the founder shares. Its mission is to advance women’s ownership, participation and fair treatment across startups and the venture capital ecosystem.

The fund is sector-agnostic and focuses on pre-Seed and Seed-stage companies. The requirement that a woman founder hold at least 20% is a prerequisite for investment, making gender representation a defining part of its investable universe rather than simply an additional consideration.

Auxxo recently announced the final closing of its Auxxo Female Catalyst Fund II at €33.3 million, surpassing its prior fund by more than 75%.

Borski Fund (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Borski Fund combines its focus on women entrepreneurs with a broader requirement for gender diversity.

The fund’s stated mission is to address the investment diversity gap by directing capital toward companies with gender-diverse teams, with particular emphasis on women entrepreneurs.

It invests in companies where, at the time of investment, at least 30% of the founder shares are held by one or more women founders or co-founders. Though Borski can invest in male teams if they are working on a FemTech innovation to reduce the gender health gap, and have a commitment to improving gender diversity within the team.

This makes Borski distinct from women-only investment models: its eligibility framework explicitly combines women founder participation with gender diversity across the broader team.

CapitalT (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

CapitalT is a women-led venture capital firm whose investment approach includes measures designed to reduce bias and broaden access to its investment process. The firm reports that 84% of its portfolio companies have at least one woman, BIPOC or LGBTQ+ founder.

CapitalT does not publicly specify a minimum ownership threshold for women founders, but instead states that it has no diversity mandate and incorporates women founders within a broader approach to identifying strong founders from diverse backgrounds.

Fund F takes an explicit women-founder approach to early-stage venture capital.

The fund invests exclusively in pre-Seed and Seed-stage technology startups with at least one woman co-founder. Its strategy is sector-agnostic, while highlighting scalable digital businesses, particularly in areas such as climate, health and FinTech.

Fund F can invest up to €600k, typically takes a lead-investor role and maintains a follow-on investment strategy. The presence of a woman co-founder is a fundamental requirement of the fund’s investment model.

Impact Shakers (Brussels, Belgium)

Impact Shakers combines impact investing with a strong emphasis on diverse founders, including women.

The firm backs diverse-founded teams and has a particular focus on women, while also running women-founder programmes and highlighting women-led businesses in areas such as climate and impact technology.

Its investment activities include a €20 million impact fund and a €2.5 million Microfund II, targeting pre-Seed and Seed-stage companies where both impact and diversity are important elements of the investment thesis.

Rather than applying a single women-equity threshold, Impact Shakers incorporates women founders into a broader impact and diversity strategy.

Merian Ventures is a firm investing in emerging technologies, with a particular emphasis on women-led and co-founded businesses.

Its investment focus includes artificial intelligence, machine learning and consumer-facing technologies, with an emphasis on high-growth businesses led or co-led by women.

Merian does not use a publicly stated minimum equity threshold for women founders. Its approach is instead based on targeting companies founded or co-founded by women within its technology investment focus.

Revaia is a European growth investment firm founded by Elina Berrebi and Alice Albizzati. With sustainability embedded across its investment strategy and portfolio engagement, the firm invests in European growth-stage technology companies and supports them through to IPO or buyout.

Revaia places particular emphasis on measurable ESG performance, including gender diversity. In 2025, the firm reported that, since 2021, women’s representation on boards across its portfolio had increased from 25% to 65%, while the proportion of women in management had risen from 19% to 29%.

The firm describes its approach as partnering with “mission-driven entrepreneurs” and investing in European sustainable growth. Its ESG framework incorporates diversity alongside environmental, governance and other sustainability considerations.

SISTAFUND is a pan-European venture capital fund specifically designed around women entrepreneurs and gender-balanced teams.

Its investment thesis requires women to hold at least 30% of the founder shares, providing one of the clearest ownership thresholds among the funds on this list. The reason for this threshold is that it “moves from tokenism to critical mass in a gender-balanced approach” and supports equitable decision-making process during a board meeting.

SISTAFUND invests from pre-Seed through Series A, with interests including HealthTech, sustainability, frontier technologies such as AI and DeepTech, and inclusive FinTech and InsurTech.

Unconventional Ventures (Copenhagen, Denmark)

Unconventional Ventures takes a broader approach to underrepresented founders, with women forming one of its central focus groups.

The firm backs diverse founding teams building impact-oriented technology companies in the Nordics and beyond. Its definition of underrepresented founders includes women, people of colour, immigrants and LGBTQ+ founders.

Its investment thesis is based on the view that diverse founding teams are undervalued by mainstream venture capital. The firm invests where at least one founding team member meets its diversity criteria and where the company’s mission aligns with its focus on more equitable outcomes.

A diverse set of models for funding women founders

These 10 funds demonstrate that there is no single model for investing in women founders across Europe.

Some vehicles make ownership by women founders an explicit investment condition. Auxxo, for example, requires a woman founder to hold at least 20% of founder shares, while SISTAFUND sets a 30% threshold and Borski requires at least 5%.

Others use a a requirement to have at least one woman co-founder, as with Fund F, or a broader diversity mandate that includes women alongside other underrepresented groups, as seen at Unconventional Ventures and Impact Shakers.

The distinction matters for founders: a fund’s description as “women-focused” does not necessarily mean that women-only ownership is required. Entrepreneurs should therefore check each vehicle’s current eligibility criteria, stage, geography, sector focus and definition of a qualifying women-led or diverse founding team before approaching the fund.

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