TechIreland report shows fewer women founders closing bigger deals
TechIreland has released its Female Founder Funding Review 2025 that tracks investment into women-founded start-ups. The report was sponsored by AWS and released in partnership with Fierce (the network of women tech founders).
The report showed that last year, 48 Irish women-founded start-ups fundraised a total of €145 million. The overall amount of funding raised by women founders is making a recovery from 2023, which was the lowest since 2019.
Deal size also increased significantly, with the average raise growing to €2.9 million in 2024 from €1.2 million in 2023. However, that was still only half the €6 million average raise for all Irish tech start-ups last year.
The number of women-founded companies that raised capital last year dropped compared to 2023, reflecting a global trend – last year women-founded companies raising capital across Europe dropped significantly.
In 2024, there were 27 reported deals of female-led companies raising between €100,000 and €3 million, compared to 64 in 2023. As usual, some rounds were undisclosed. Startups raising €1 million – €3 million remained steady, with 14 companies raising €26 million. Angel networks including AwakenAngels and HBAN helped female founders and government-backed initiatives such as NDRC, Founders Accelerator, HBAN, and Enterprise Ireland’s PSSF and HPSU are playing a key role in early-stage funding.
As in previous years, while the number of companies raising investment dropped compared to the previous year, the total amount of funding increased due to a small number of very large deals. Four investments accounted for €85 million or 60% of the funding for women founded start-ups. Deals include Dublin’s Nuritas (€38 million) and Croivalve (€15 million), Galway’s Mbryonics (€18 million) and Luminate Medical (€15 million).
Ten of the female-founded start-ups were a third-level spinout that collectively raised €42 million. State supports such as European Innovation Council’s funding and Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund play a crucial role in funding deep tech innovation.
Sectoral focus
Reflecting the strength of Ireland’s life science and healthtech sector, funding into these segments made up nearly 90% of the €145 million invested. This trend mirrors what we see across Europe, where health remains a top sector for female founders. Investment into enterprise software – another strong Irish sector – grew significantly with €11 million raised by 10 companies in 2024 compared to nine raising €3 million in 2023.
Eight of the 48 women-led start-ups were working on artificial intelligence solutions. Overall funding levels into edtech grew from €100,000 in 2023 to €1.6 million in 2024 and agri-food from €1.2 million to €3.5 million. CleanTech remained steady at over the same period, holding at €2.7 million. Fintech continued its downward trend, falling from €72 million in 2022 to €4 million in 2023 and €2 million in 2024.
In terms of regional spread, as usual, over half of all Female Founders Funding went to companies in Dublin. However, eleven companies in Galway collectively raised €54 Million – all Life Sciences companies. And of the 10 spinouts that raised money in 2024, 6 are from Galway. Five Cork-based Female Founded Startups raised €4m.
Responding to the report chief executive of TechIreland John O’Dea said: “This is TechIreland’s seventh report on Irish Women Founder funding and support. While the picture is getting better, it’s clear we still have a long way to go. Tech start-ups with even one female founder account for less than 15% of the total raised by Irish companies and the average funding raised by companies with a woman founder is only half the average for all companies. Clearly, doing more to support women tech entrepreneurs is urgently required.’’
Aine Mulloy, account manager, start-ups at Amazon Web Services, said: ‘‘For female founders, it’s clear that 2024 was hard won, with €145 million raised across 48 companies. While this represents over a 50% increase on 2023, it’s clear that some large outliers inflated the total. Early stage funding continues to dwindle. Female founders are delivering growth on a shoestring, imagine what they could do with a full suite of supports.”
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