Why the AI funding surge is distorting the ecosystem for female founders?
The surge in artificial intelligence investment is reshaping venture capital markets, but it is also concentrating funding in ways that may complicate progress for women founders.
While female-founded startups in the United States raised a record amount of venture funding in 2025, much of the capital was concentrated in a handful of AI companies, highlighting persistent structural imbalances in the startup ecosystem.
PitchBook data shows startups with at least one female founder raised a record $73.6 billion in 2025, nearly doubling the $44.7 billion secured two years earlier.
At the same time, the number of deals involving female-founded startups has continued to decline, leaving much of the broader pipeline under pressure.
AI dominates funding
PitchBook’s US All In: Female Founders in the VC Ecosystem report found that artificial intelligence absorbed about two-thirds of venture capital invested in startups with at least one female founder in 2025.
The surge reflects a broader shift in venture capital, where investors are concentrating money in companies building AI models and data infrastructure.
Nearly half of the AI funding directed to female-founded startups went to just two firms: Anthropic and Scale AI.
Megadeals shape totals
Anthropic, co-founded by Daniela Amodei, and Scale AI, co-founded by Lucy Guo, are now among the most valuable venture-backed companies in the US.
Their valuations stand at $183 billion and $74.1 billion, respectively.
Together, the two companies raised more than $30 billion.
Their funding helped push female-founded startups above one-quarter of total US venture deal value for the first time.
Without those two companies, the record funding figure for female-founded startups would not exist.
Record seed round
Large AI rounds have also reshaped early-stage venture statistics.
In July 2025, former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati raised a $2 billion seed round for her startup Thinking Machines Lab.
The deal became the largest seed funding round ever and valued the pre-product company at $12 billion.
These mega rounds increase total investment figures while fewer startups receive funding.
Fewer deals and persistent barriers
Despite rising capital totals, venture deals involving female-founded startups have fallen for four consecutive years since peaking in 2021.
Earlier trends showed similar concentration.
In 2022, female-founded companies with mixed-gender teams captured about 18.4% of US venture capital, while all-female teams secured roughly 2%.
By 2023, female-founded startups accounted for about 22.8% of deal value, even as the number of deals continued to shrink.
The pressure has been greatest for all-female founding teams, which recorded sharper declines in both deal value and deal count than mixed-gender startups.
Outside AI and resilient sectors such as biotechnology, venture activity remains slow.
Early-stage companies face the most difficulty, while later-stage and growth rounds captured a larger share of funding in 2025.
Historically, female-founded startups have been more capital efficient, generating more than twice the revenue per dollar invested than male-founded companies while maintaining lower median burn rates and faster exits.
Those advantages narrowed recently, though female-founded startups still show slightly stronger progression after their first round.
At the same time, venture capital decision-making remains overwhelmingly male dominated.
Among US firms managing at least $50 million in assets, men account for 82% of decision-makers, and nearly 90% of large firms are majority male at the partner level.
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