More progress needed as Irish women founders raise only €145m

While funding levels are up year-on-year, there has been a sharp drop in the number of women founders raising venture capital in Ireland.

A total of 48 Irish women tech founders raised €145m in funding in 2024, according to new figures from TechIreland.

While this is an improvement from the €93m raised by Irish women founders in 2023 – the lowest on record – the numbers of women raising finance has fallen sharply from the 77 who raised funding that year.

The latest TechIreland Female Founder Funding Review 2025, sponsored by Amazon Web Services released in partnership with women tech founder network Fierce, indicates that the funding levels in 2024 signal a recovery on last year.

But both 2023 and 2024 pale against the highest record of €234m raised by Irish female founders in 2022.

Ireland needs to double down on supports for female founders

A sliver of silver lining can be see in how deal size in 2024 increased significantly, with the average raise by female founders growing to €2.9m in 2024 from €1.2m in 2023.

However, that was still only half the €6m average raise for all Irish tech start-ups last year.

“While the picture is getting better, it’s clear we still have a long way to go,” said John O’Dea, CEO of TechIreland.

“Tech startups 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.”

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. 

‘‘Female-founded companies in Europe raised over €5.76 bn in 2024 – around 12% of all capital raised,” noted Orla Browne, head of Insights at Dealroom.

“While this marks a decline from 2023, it aligns with the broader market trend. Collectively, women-led businesses contribute over €4.5bn in enterprise value to the Irish ecosystem, with nearly half of this value coming from companies established in the last decade.”

In 2024, there were 27 reported deals of female-led companies raising between €0.1m and €3m, compared to 64 in 2023.

‘‘Ireland has the potential to become a launchpad for early-stage, women-led startups – attracting global investment as they scale,” said Lorraine Curham, head of Ops at NDRC.

“However, achieving this requires more early-stage funding and sectoral diversification.”

As usual, some rounds were undisclosed. Start-ups raising €1m – €3m remained steady, with 14 companies raising €26m. 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.

Why should female-funded investments be ‘hard won’?

‘‘For female founders, it’s clear that 2024 was hard won, with €145m raised across 48 companies,” said Aine Mulloy, account manager, Start-ups, at Amazon Web Services.

“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.”

As is previous years, while the number of companies raising investment dropped compared to the previous year, the total amount funding increased due to a small number of very large deals.

Four investments accounted for  €85m or 60% of the funding for women founded startups. Deals include Dublin’s Nuritas (€38m) and Croivalve (€15m), Galway’s Mbryonics (€18m) and Luminate Medical (€15m). 

Interestingly, 1-in-4 of the female-founded startups, was a third-level spinout.

“Despite a challenging funding landscape, female-founded startups in Ireland continue to demonstrate remarkable resilience and innovation,” said Susan Kelly director at ICT Skillnet.

“While overall investment figures have fluctuated, female-led businesses remain a critical force in Ireland’s tech ecosystem, employing thousands of skilled professionals and driving advancements in key industries.

Collectively the 10 spinouts raised €42m. State supports such as European Innovation Council’s funding and Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund play a crucial role in funding  deep tech innovation. 

Funding of life sciences and healthtech businesses made up nearly 90% of the €145m invested.

This trend mirrors across Europe, where health remains a top sector for female founders.

“The challenge cannot be understated for early-stage founders raising their first round without an established network,” lamented Emma Meehan, founder and CTO of Precision Sports technology which raised funding last year.

“We are delighted to have Precision Sports Technology’s pre-seed round contributing to these figures, but this was after almost three years of building, bootstrapping and making the most out of government supports. These Government supports are where I feel Ireland truly shines, and we wouldn’t be where we are without them.”

Investment into enterprise software, another strong Irish sector, grew significantly with €11m raised by 10 women-founded companies in 2024 compared to nine raising €3m in 2023.

Eight of the 48 women-led start-ups are working on artificial intelligence solutions.

Overall funding levels into edtech grew from €0.1m (2023) to €1.6m (2024) and agri/food from €1.2m (2023) to €3.5m (2024), while cleantech remained steady at €2.7m. Fintech continues its downward trend, falling from €72m (2022) to €4m (2023) to €2m (2024).

In terms of regional spread, as usual, more than half of all female founders’ funding went to companies in Dublin.

However, 11 companies in Galway collectively raised €54m – all life sciences companies. 

And of the 10 spinouts that raised money in 2024, six are from Galway. Five Cork-based female-founded start-ups raised €4m.

‘‘TechIreland’s data shows that female founders are attracting larger investments over recent years and we need to continue to build on this,” said Conor O’Donovan, head of Start-ups & Entrepreneurship at Enterprise Ireland.

“Despite the gains made in recent years, there is more to be done to encourage more women to participate across all stages of our startup ecosystem.”

Read the full report here:

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