Female funding sets record nationally, but there’s more to this story

March 5, 2026

Female funding is not going in the right direction in South Florida. After a strong rebound in 2024, venture capital dollars flowing to female-founded companies in South Florida fell back sharply in 2025. This comes in a year when overall funding in South Florida was up 49% over 2024. The percentage share of female-founded deals and dollars in South Florida also lags the national trends. But let’s look at the national trends first and then see where the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro area stands.

What’s the national picture?

In the US, female-founded companies collectively raised a record $73.6 billion in 2025, nearly twice as much as in 2024, even as total deal count declined. However, more than $30 billion of this came from Anthropic and Scale AI (whose female co-founder, Lucy Guo, left in 2018), as AI heavyweights create capital concentration across fewer but larger rounds, leading female-founded companies to account for a record 27.7% of total annual US deal value.

The results are part of Pitchbook’s recently released 2025 US All In: Female Founders in the VC Ecosystem report that highlights the evolving landscape for female founders in the VC ecosystem. Despite progress in overall funding levels, female-founded companies continue to face systemic challenges in securing investment.

What’s more, the share of funding awarded to women rose year-over-year. Nationally, female-founded companies raised 27.7% of the venture capital in 2025, up from 19.9% in 2024 and is up from about 15% a decade ago. By deal count, female-founded startups raised 24.1% of the deals, down slightly from 2024’s 25.7% and up slightly a decade ago at 22%. (Note that Pitchbook defines female-founded startups as startups with at least one female co-founder. She may or may not be the CEO and doesn’t have to be currently active in the startup.)

If you exclude Scale AI and Anthropic, female-founded companies raised abouty 13% more venture dollars in 2025 than the year before, Pitchbook’s data shows. “That suggests there is underlying momentum behind the headline-grabbing AI rounds,” said Annemarie Donegan, a PitchBook senior custom research analyst and the author of the report.

Meanwhile, companies founded solely by women in the US raised just 1.1% of the venture capital dollars, down from a dismal 2.1% in 2024, and 6% of the deals, figures that have barely budged since 2008.

Consider this: All-female teams raised a total of $3.2 billion (across 794 deals) while all-male teams raised $191.1 billion (10,048), according to the Pitchbook report. While all-male founding teams raised 21% more capital than the previous year in the US, all-female founding teams raised 22% less capital, Pitchbook’s research found.

An important finding in the report was that median pre-money valuations rose by more than 50% across female-founded and broader US cohorts. All-female teams lagged peers but still posted valuation growth exceeding 25%, underscoring resilience despite the far lower capital concentration, the report said. Another finding was that female-founded startups are more heavily represented in consumer and life sciences, with personal and food products standing out as the only segments where they receive more than half of all US venture checks.

What’s the local picture?

South Florida startups with at least one woman founder secured $478 million (across 70 deals) from investors in 2025, according to Pitchbook data. That’s down sharply from a revised $806 million across 85 deals in 2024, when female-founded startup activity nearly quadrupled over 2023.

In 2025 in the Miami metro area, startups with by all-women founder teams raised $82 million (across 22 deals) of that $478 million pie.

Seed-stage startups with female founders accounted for 28 of the 70 deals and collectively attracted $52 million 2025. Startups that raised Series A rounds secured $102 million over 18 deals and later-stage startups (Series B and higher) raised $323 million over 24 deals, according to Pitchbook’s data.

Collectively, these startups accounted for just 12% of what South Florida startups raised in total, according to my research, and by deal count, 19%, lagging the national trends. All-female startups in the Miami metro accounted for 2% of the total raised and 8% of the deal count, a slightly larger share than the national trend.

Here’s a look at South Florida fundings of female-founded startups through the years.

Source: Pitchbook

Here are the top female-founded startup fundings in 2025, according to Pitchbook’s data, that I could verify. At least one co-founder is female and they are not necessarily the CEO; they may not even be currently active in the startup. Unrivaled and Gorgie are all female-co-founded teams and run by female CEOs.

GoTu, the leading on-demand marketplace for dental talent, raised $45 million.
Hope Hydration, provider of hydro stations for free filtered water, raised $26.3 million.
Unrivaled, women’s basketball sports league, raised $26 million.
Gorgie, a Boca Raton-based energy drink startup, raised $24.5 million
Dispatch, a Miami-based data orchestration platform built specifically for wealth management, raised $18 million.

**What about the numbers of female funders?**

Increasing the female representation of check-writing roles in VC firms can create more opportunities for women founders because female investors can identify and back startups that may otherwise not be considered, the US ALL IN report said. However the data indicates that just 18% of the partners, principals and managing directors at VC firms with $50 million or more in assets under management across the country are female. That percentage is 20.5% for smaller US VC firms.

The share of larger VC firms with a majority of female partners is just 11.3%; for smaller VC firms, is a more meaningful 32%.

San Francisco-based All Raise and Tampa-based Embarc Collective’s Glaring Gap Summits have been working on these disparities when it comes to female funding and funders.

Download the US ALL IN report by Pitchbook here.

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Nancy Dahlberg

I am a writer and editor with extensive media experience and a passion for journalism and serving the community. Most of my career has been spent with the Miami Herald in business news, and my expertise is writing about tech and entrepreneurs. I love hosting this blog for Refresh Miami and we aim to be the go-to site for South Florida startup and tech news, features and views. Have news? Contact me at [email protected]. Thanks for reading!

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