The share of fairness funding going to all female-founded companies remained at 2% in 2025, the identical as the common throughout the final decade.
All-female founder groups additionally raised solely 7% of UK fairness offers, once more the identical determine for the previous 10 years, based on the report by British Enterprise Financial institution.
Different information confirmed the proportion of offers raised by groups comprising at the very least one feminine founding entrepreneur was 25% in 2025, down 3% on 2024.
The share of funding worth captured by these groups additionally decreased from 18% to fifteen%.
The examine confirmed {that a} report 44% of all UK fairness funding into smaller companies went to AI corporations final yr, pushed by a number of massive “mega offers”.
It warned that the “rising prevalence of enormous fairness offers amongst AI corporations in 2025 are exacerbating these tendencies on a worth foundation”.
Of all AI-related offers above £10 million since 2021, just one has concerned corporations based by all-female groups.
Simply 3% of AI offers went to all-female founder groups, decrease that the cross-sector common of seven% and even decrease than the common for offers regarding know-how/IP-based companies (5%).
The gender of buyers can also be a problem, with the report saying the underrepresentation of feminine decision-makers within the enterprise capital trade is “extremely pronounced” amongst these backing AI-related offers.
Current analysis UK tendencies between 2012 and 2022 discovered that VC companies with equal or majority illustration of girls on the decision-maker degree made up solely 4.5% of all those that invested in AI and accounted for a fair smaller share of whole capital invested (3.4%).
The imbalance can also be proven by information on the gender breakdown of buyers claiming tax reduction beneath EIS and SEIS.
Over tax years 2022-23 to 2024-25, feminine buyers accounted for 19% of EIS claims and 14% of the worth of these claims. For SEIS, it was 18% of claims and 14% of declare worth.
In different findings, feminine‑founder groups raised a lot smaller offers on common, with all-male groups persistently elevating rounds that had been round 4 instances bigger. Ladies groups had been additionally much less prone to safe observe‑on funding than all‑male and blended‑gender groups.
Following their first funding spherical, solely 43% of feminine founder groups went on to boost a subsequent spherical, in contrast with 51% of all-male groups and 57% of blended gender groups.
Boosting funding for feminine entrepreneurs
The persistent lack of progress in feminine illustration amongst equity-backed corporations comes regardless of a number of efforts to deal with it. Examples are the Investing in Ladies Code which goals to deal with gender funding disparities in monetary providers.
The Spend money on Ladies Taskforce, which was arrange in 2024 to spice up the quantity of finance going to feminine entrepreneurs, is organising funding schemes, together with the £130m ‘Ladies backing Ladies Fund of Funds’.
A report by the Ladies and Equalities Committee final yr mentioned feminine entrepreneurs face “important disadvantages in accessing finance, networks and assist resulting from systemic bias, an absence of variety amongst funding decision-makers and entrenched cultural norms.
The Rose Overview of feminine entrepreneurship, led by former Natwest Group CEO Alison Rose, mentioned £250 billion might be added to the UK financial system if ladies began and scaled companies on the identical fee as males.
