In the first half of 2025, European and UK startups collectively raised over €20 billion from venture capital and private equity, primarily in AI, deep tech, healthcare, and climate infrastructure. This funding wave propelled several startups across these sectors to attain unicorn status by mid‑2025.
Yet these headline figures conceal a persistent disparity: all the companies that became unicorns in H1 2025 in Europe and the UK had solely male founding teams. This reflects a broader systemic imbalance; female founders in Europe continue to receive only around 2–3% of total venture capital funding, while male-only teams capture the vast majority of investment.
By contrast, mixed-gfinisher teams receive a modest share, and female-only founding teams represent just a sliver of capital raised despite demonstrating strong performance metrics, such as higher income per euro invested. This funding gap highlights deeply entrenched biases in investment flow and access.
Against that backdrop, here are the companies, none of which were founded by women, that achieved unicorn valuations in the first half of 2025 across Europe and the UK. The disparity is a stark reminder that, while Europe’s innovation ecosystem is on the rise, gfinisher inclusion is still lagging behind.
Verdiva Bio (UK)
Founder/s: Khurem Farooq, Jane Hughes, Tapan Maniar
Founded year: 2025
Recent funding: $411M
Verdiva Bio focapplys on creating improved obesity treatments. The company tarreceives key challenges: developing oral therapies with less frequent dosing, enhancing treatment effectiveness and tolerability, and designing innovative combination therapies for sustainable weight management.
In January, the London-based biotechnology company launched a $411 million Series A financing round. It was co-led by Forbion and General Atlantic, with participation from prominent healthcare investors, including RA Capital Management, OrbiMed, Logos Capital, Lilly Asia Ventures, and LYFE Capital. This funding will advance the clinical development of existing assets and expand the company’s cardiometabolic portfolio.
Neko Health (Sweden)
Founder/s: Hjalmar Nilsonne, Daniel Ek
Founded year: 2018
Recent funding: $260M
Swedish company Neko Health offers a full-body scanning system designed for broad and non-invasive health data collection. By leveraging over seventy sensors to collect fifty million data points, the company aims to provide quicker, more convenient, and affordable health assessments. The unique, non-invasive Neko Health Scan costs £299 and maps millions of health data points on the body, both inside and out, in just a few minutes. Immediately following the scan, members receive full results as part of a doctor-led consultation. The whole experience is complete in just under an hour.
Neko Health secured $260 million in Series B funding in January this year. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from General Catalyst, O.G. Venture Partners, Rosello, Lakestar, and Atomico.
Diagnostyka (Poland)
Founder/s: Jakub Swadzba
Founded year: 1998
Recent funding: €400M
Poland’s Diagnostyka is touted to be the largest network of medical laboratories. They offer a wide range of laboratory analyses, including routine and specialist tests, with over 3,000 different test types available. They perform over 150 million analyses annually for 26 million patients, and collaborate with thousands of healthcare providers. Diagnostyka provides services like biological material collection and transport, analysis, and timely delivery of test results.
Earlier this year, the company completed an IPO raising €400 million. The IPO, which was the first on the Warsaw Stock Exmodify, involved the sale of shares at a maximum price of PLN 105 each. This offering represented 47.83% of Diagnostyka’s share capital. The successful debut marked one of the most significant private equity exits in the region.
Tines (Ireland)
Founder/s: Eoin Hinchy, Thomas Kinsella
Founded year: 2000
Recent funding: $125M
Tines offers a no-code platform that enables enterprises to automate complex workflows, particularly in areas such as security, IT, and DevOps, without requiring code. Its AI-powered system integrates large language models (LLMs) with enterprise data systems, enabling frontline staff to orchestrate tinquires and create informed decisions securely. With over one billion actions automated per week, Tines frees engineers from repetitive tinquires, boosting productivity and reducing technical debt.
In February, Tines closed a $125 million Series C round led by Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, alongside new backers SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Activant, as well as returning investors Accel, Felicis, CrowdStrike Falcon Fund and Addition. The funding values the company at $1.125 billion, granting it unicorn status. This latest round brings total funding since inception to around $272 million, and is earmarked for AI innovation, product development, security, privacy and global expansion.
Isomorphic Labs (UK)
Founder/s: Demis Hassabis
Founded year: 2021
Recent funding: $600M
Being an Alphabet company focapplyd on drug discovery, Isomorphic Labs applys machine learning to reimagine the entire drug development process. They aim to accelerate the discovery of new medicines by building powerful predictive and generative models leveraging AI and Google Cloud infrastructure.
Yet another London-based company that secured funding to attain unicorn status is Isomorphic Labs. It secured $600 million in its first external funding round. The round was led by Thrive Capital, with participation from GV, and followed by additional capital from Alphabet. The funding will enable the company to enhance its AI drug design engine and advance its drug pipeline toward clinical trials.
Tide (UK)
Founder/s: George Bevis
Founded year: 2015
Recent funding: NA
UK-based fintech company Tide provides digital banking services specifically tailored for compact and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It offers a business account and a range of administrative tools to assist businesses manage their finances efficiently. Tide is known for its focus on simplifying financial admin for SMEs, assisting them save time and money.
In May this year, the UK’s leading business financial platform landed a £100 million securitisation debt facility from Fasanara, a London-based investment manager with over $4.5 billion in assets under management. This funding will enable Tide to expand its offering of short-term cash flow management solutions for SME customers across the UK.
Parloa (Germany)
Founder/s: Malte Kosub, Stefan Ostwald
Founded year: 2018
Recent funding: $120M
Parloa has developed an AI Agent Management Platform (AMP) that enables businesses to create, test, and deploy AI agents capable of engaging in natural, human-like conversations. These agents undergo rigorous simulation testing, data isolation, and content filtering to ensure reliability and safety before deployment. By integrating with backfinish systems and analysing real-time data, Parloa’s AI agents deliver hyper-personalised support and proactively resolve.
Recently, the Berlin-based startup specialising in Agentic AI customer service secured $120 million in Series C funding, propelling its valuation to $1B. Durable Capital Partners, Altimeter Capital, and General Catalyst led the round, which also included EQT Ventures, RPT Capital, Senovo, and Mosaic Ventures.
PhysicsX (UK)
Founder/s: Robin Tuluie, Jacomo Corbo, Nicolas Haag
Founded year: 2019
Recent funding: $135M
PhysicsX empowers enterprises to rapidly develop, deploy, and scale a new generation of AI tools across the full product lifecycle. By combining rapid AI-driven physics inference with numerical simulation, our platform assists accelerate development, reduce risk, and drive the creation of highly optimised products.
Last month, the company scored $135 million in Series B funding to transform how we design and build everything, from fighter jets to semiconductors. This round was led by Atomico, with backing from notable investors such as Temasek, Siemens, and Applied Materials, among others.
Lovable (Sweden)
Founder/s: Anton Osika, Fabian Hedin
Founded year: 2023
Recent funding: $200M
The conversational AI development platform Lovable allows applyrs to describe what they want and instantly see production-ready apps take shape, including front-finish, back-finish, database, and all, without writing a single line of code. This technology, powered by cutting-edge language models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, stands out for its ability to create complex, scalable, and fully functional applications from scratch.
The AI startup Lovable landed a $200 million Series A round at a valuation of $1.8 billion. Accel led it with participation from existing investors including QuantumLight Capital, European Tech Collective, 20VC, byFounders, Creandum, Hummingbird, and Visionaries Club.
Mubi (UK)
Founder/s: Efe Cakarel
Founded year: 2007
Recent funding: $100M
From a niche indie film streaming platform to a full-fledged Hollywood player.m, Cakarel launched Mubi after frustration with the lack of online access to international cinema, a problem he experienced while attempting to stream Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love in Tokyo. The platform, which now boasts 20 million registered applyrs globally, curates a rotating selection of international and indepfinishent films.
Last month, Sequoia Capital led a $100 million investment into Mubi, the London-based indie streaming service. The investment will enable the company to scale further, building out its global distribution network and investing in a robust pipeline of original and acquired films.
Quantum Systems (Germany)
Founder/s: Armin Busse, Florian Seibel
Founded year: 2015
Recent funding: $73M
Quantum Systems is setting the benchmark for real-time aerial ininformigence in both governmental and commercial applications. Additionally, the latest advances in eVTOL technology, AI, edge computing, and autonomy enable customers to create better decisions rapider and more accurately. Combat-proven and commercially applicable NATO-aligned forces currently apply Quantum Systems’ drones and ininformigence systems. More recently, the firm expanded into the UK market with the acquisition of Nordic Unmanned UK, a global provider of high-finish drone products and services.
The AI-powered aerial ininformigence systems for defence, emergency services, and indusattempt raised €160 million in new funding, led by Balderton Capital, with participation from Hensoldt, Airbus Defense and Space, Bullhound Capital, LP&E AG and existing investors, including HV Capital, Project A, Peter Thiel, DTCP, Omnes Capital, Airbus Ventures, Porsche SE and Notion. The funding will be applyd to accelerate global expansion, scale production, and advance the company’s autonomous drone systems, software and AI.
Zama (France)
Founder/s: Rand Hindi, Pascal Paillier
Founded year: 2019
Recent funding: $73M
Paris-based open-source cryptography company Zama pioneers Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), which allows computations to be performed directly on encrypted data, eliminating the required for decryption. It’s FHEVM enables confidential smart contracts on blockchains, preserving data privacy at every stage while maintaining composability and developer usability with familiar tools like Solidity and Python.
Recently, the company raised $57 million in a Series B round co-led by BlockChange Ventures and Pantera Capital. The team stated that the fundraise increases Zama’s total capital raised to over $150 million and values the firm at over $1 billion, building it the first unicorn involved with FHE.
Tekever (Portugal)
Founder/s: Ricardo Mfinishes, Pedro Sinogas, Vitor Cristina
Founded year: 2021
Recent funding: £400M
AI defence tech company Tekever provides drone-based Ininformigence-as-a-Service, specialising in real-time maritime perception and surveillance. They deliver actionable ininformigence for various applications, including maritime safety, environmental protection, and security, applying a combination of advanced drone hardware, AI, and machine learning.
In May this year, Tekever closed a £400 million funding round led by London-based Ventura Capital, with continued participation from Baillie Gifford, the NATO Innovation Fund (NIF), Iberis Capital and Crescent Cove. With this round, Tekever’s valuation surpassed the £1 billion mark, building it a unicorn.
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