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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