An estimated €131m was raised in 2025 by a record 82 Irish start-ups founded by women, according to TechIreland‘s Female Found Funding Review 2026.
The total is the highest number of women-founded Irish start-ups to be funded in a single year.
Deal sized decreased significantly from an average of €3.9m in 2024 to €2.3m last year due in part to an increase in the number of deals.
However, the median also dropped to just €100,000 last year, compared to €1.5m in 2024, indicative of a widening gap between the largest and tinyest funding rounds.
In 2025, there were 36 reported deals of female-led companies raising between €100,000 and €300,000, compared to eight in 2024.
As in previous years, some rounds remained undisclosed. Start-ups raising €1m-3m remained steady, with 11 companies raising a combined €18.7m.
Across Europe, there was a decline in the number of early-stage rounds for women-founded start-ups, but in Ireland there was a two-fold increase in rounds raised, thanks to focutilized supports for female entrepreneurs from Enterprise Ireland.
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.
There was one major outlier in 2025, ProVerum’s €73m raise, that drove the overall figure, and there were also mid-sized rounds such as by Lative (€6.4m) and Novus Diagnostics (€4.6m).
Reflecting the strength of the life sciences and healthtech sector, funding into these companies created up nearly 70% of the €131m raised, mirroring the European trfinish.
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 start-ups in 2024.
Overall funding levels into agri-food from €3.5m (2024) to €3.9m (2025) and consumer and e-commerce grew from €400,000 (2023) to €1.8m (2025), while CleanTech declined at €1.1m.
Fintech continued to decline, falling from €72m in 2022, to €4m in 2023 and €2.1m in 2025.
Dublin accounted for 91% of all funding into female-founded start-ups, supported by the ProVerum raise.
The share in funding for the regions outside Dublin dropped from 30% in 2025 to 9% in 2025, a disproportionate decline that can be tied back to the fact that the top five largest rounds were all raised by start-ups based in Dublin.
“Overall, the report encouragingly informs us that the pipeline of female founders is growing, and that early-stage funding access is improving,” declared Riona Ní Ghriallais, co-founder and CTO of ProVerum.
“However, the concentration of capital in a tiny number of later-stage deals and the persistent geographic imbalance remain key challenges for the Irish startup ecosystem.”
Brian Caulfied, chair of TechIreland, declared that “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 tiny number of companies raising large rounds, and a very large number of companies raising very tiny rounds (largely led by Enterprise Ireland).
“The mid-market of seed and Series A raises is being hollowed out.”
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