Increased funding for female tech startups
A new wave of venture capital funds bets on female founders. Funding for female founders is increasingly leaning into deep-tech areas, such as semiconductors, robotics and quantum, financial data firm PitchBook says in a report. However, while more capital is heading into female-founded startups, their share of overall investment remains small.
All-female founding teams accounted for just 1% of deal value this year, down from 1.3% in 2025.
Mixed teams have seen a modest bump to 16.3% from 15% in 2025, but are still below previous years’ levels, PitchBook reports.
“Several European funds have closed or launched to back female founders, who are currently experiencing a surge in investment. Female-focused VC funds are piling up this year as women-founded startups pull in more capital.”
Deal value currently stands at €9.7 billion this year, according to PitchBook’s European VC female founders dashboard, almost reaching 2025’s annual total.
“At the current pace, 2026 is tracking to be the third-highest year for female founders in terms of capital. Mirroring the wider European market, deal count is set to fall short of 2025’s figure.”
The report says that funding for female founders is increasingly leaning into deep-tech areas, such as semiconductors, robotics and quantum.
In an earlier report, PitchBook stresses that AI is reshaping cybersecurity by changing how fast threats emerge and how quickly organizations must respond.
Attackers can use AI tools to map targets, automate intrusions and generate convincing digital deceptions. Cybersecurity spending continues to grow faster than global GDP. AI has become both a driver of new cyber risks and a durable engine of long-term market opportunity, PitchBook says in a report showing that AI-native cybersecurity accounted for 50.5% of global cybersecurity VC deals in 2025.
“As AI becomes easier to access through public interfaces and online services, the range of vulnerable systems grows across software, data, and supply chains. Security teams are responding by adopting AI-native platforms that learn normal behaviour across identity, cloud, and network environments and generate their own insights instead of relying only on rules or signatures.”
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