For women-led venture firms, 2025 was not a stellar year. Capital raised by funds in which at least half of the general partners are women dropped by nearly 37 percent to $2.45 billion across 127 funds last year from $3.88 billion across 170 funds in 2024, as Venture Capital Journal has reported.

It’s become common knowledge that women, along with other under-represented fund managers and most emerging managers, find it harder to secure commitments from institutional limited partners than white men do. While a handful of women’s investing communities are trying to foster more female LPs, there’s still a dearth of women decision-makers at most established asset management firms.

An alternative that many female VCs largely overlook is high-net-worth women who increasingly earn their own wealth rather than acquiring it through family ties.

Going after women LPs “is a hugely under-used opportunity,” says Julie Castro Abrams, managing partner at How Women Invest (HWI), a San Francisco VC firm that’s raising its third fund. “The market of women VCs is just young, so getting women [LPs] to understand and engage in this opportunity is an educational and intentional effort.

“We have this whole generation of women who’ve got extraordinary work experience, operational leadership roles, as well as education,” and are more confident about investing than many people think, Abrams tells VCJ.

Moreover, a desire to support women-led companies is the top motivation among these investors, followed closely by access to high-growth opportunities and participation in innovation. Nearly 60 percent of women surveyed by HWI and How Women Lead, an affiliated non-profit global community of more than 25,000 female senior executives of which Abrams is CEO, say that gender diversity has a meaningful influence on where they invest, with over one-third calling it a major factor or outright requirement, according to HWI’s recent Women, Wealth & the Capital Continuum 2026 Report.

One bright spot from the report: 67 percent of respondents say they plan to invest $25,000-$49,000 in venture funds this year.

The report also found that 44 percent of respondents have invested across multiple private funds or vehicles. However, nearly half are still at the earliest stages of engaging with private markets: 27 percent have made only one or two private investments and an additional 22 percent have never invested in private markets.

Historically, women have not been significant participants in financial markets and “are more likely to listen to their financial advisers,” but that’s due more to structural and systemic issues than lack of confidence, Abrams notes.

Since its founding in 2020, HWI has invested in 33 companies, with five exits across its first two funds. Fund I, with four exits so far, has returned $3.5 million (35 percent) to LPs, and the firm sees meaningful upside still ahead for a 2020 vintage fund.

HWI’s first two venture funds, each $10 million in size, were backed primarily by allocations from individual women investors. Its third fund is targeting $100 million, with a final close projected for December.

Fund III has secured $65 million in commitments to date, of which $14 million has been collected. More than one-third (34 percent) of those who have committed are qualified purchasers with $5 million or more to invest in private assets, and 22 women have made commitments of $1 million each. Commitments from institutional LPs have been less firm “because I’m going from a $10 million fund to $100 million,” says Abrams. “Some institutional investors have said, ‘We’ll come in once you hit $50 million’” because they can’t be over-represented in a smaller fund.

The 22 women who committed $1 million each include a public company CFO, a woman who sold two legal tech companies and the co-owner of a health brokerage firm that was recently sold, says Abrams. Others are doctors and “a number of PhDs in the sciences who have been inside other companies that have exited, so they understand the process and have some wealth through exits, but they weren’t the founders of those companies.”

Lower minimum

By reducing the minimum commitment to $25,000 paid over four years, HWI has been able to attract more than 600 first-time LPs to VC since its launch six years ago, Abrams tells VCJ.

HWI’s low-touch approach has also been a plus. Investors in HWI’s funds like the fact that “they’re not going to get multiple capital calls, or get capital calls while they’re on vacation,” Abrams says. “My intent was to make it really easy for people to participate. And more and more, after doing this for a couple of years, [I’ve found] the simpler I make the process, [the better]. Even sharing our data room is too much information.”

For Fuel Venture Capital, which is partially led by women, opportunities in AI and innovation have drawn increasing interest from women rather than a mandate to back more women-led companies, says Selene Casabal, Fuel’s chief venture officer and a managing general partner.

“We’re seeing a lot of female investors who have come to us, essentially saying, ‘I’m using AI companies like Replit and OpenAI, etcetera. I believe this is the future. How do I invest?’” she tells VCJ. “They don’t want to miss out on the private market or on the companies that they’re using.”

Often these investors are more knowledgeable about AI than their male peers, Casabal notes. “Men see the opportunity in general in AI, but the women investors that I’ve experienced know the companies’ names and want to understand: ‘How does one invest in OpenAI or Anthropic?’”

Fuel’s minimum commitment is $100,000, which Casabal says has not resulted in any pushback from individual women because the firm specifically targets HNWIs who are able to write larger checks.

While Fuel and HWI have different commitment minimums, both see high-net-worth women as a key part of their LP base.