Female Foundry Week 140: Seek & Find. IT infrastructure deals drive M&A revival. The Soft Launch Female Innovation Index 2025.
Welcome to The Week 140, 2025 Edition of the Female Foundry newsletter!
Female Foundry - the Future of Venture is here.
In the news
Madrid-based live music events analytics startup Breakevent, co-founded by Lucia Martinez Prado, secures a €876k Seed round led by Archipelago Next to scale its platform for data-driven insights in the live events industry; German cleantech startup Oxyle, co-founded by Dr. Fajer Mushtaq, lands a €15.7m Seed round led by 360 Capital to develop innovative technology that destroys PFAS in water; Dublin-based Mobility Mojo, co-founded by Noelle Daly, lands a €4.2m round from Gresham House Ventures to drive inclusivity in the workplace; A climatetech analysis platform Sightline, co-founded by Kim Zou, bags a €5.5m Seed round co-led by Molten Ventures to scale its platform for data-driven climate insights; UK-based Neu Health, co-founded by Caroline Cake, raises a €1.9m round from Oxford Science Enterprises for its AI-driven care for Parkinson’s and dementia patients; Amsterdam-based Agurotech, co-founded by Joëlle van den Brand and Lilia Planjyan, fetches a €2.25m Seed round from Navus Ventures, ROM InWest and Rabo Ventures to integrate sensor technology, weather monitoring, and AI-powered analytics to assist farmers; Swedish Adsorbi, co-founded by Hanna Johansson and Kinga Grenda, fetches a €1m Pre-Seed round from Metsä Spring, Chalmers Ventures, Jovitech Invest to to improve indoor air quality with bio-based materials; London-based Zelt, co-founded by Polina Vorms, bags a $6m funding round led by Nauta for its all-in-one people management platform.
Spotlight
Seek & Find.
Global investors dumped tech stocks on Monday after DeepSeek’s model release sent shockwaves through the tech industry, slashing Nvidia’s valuation by $600bn and making startup founders flock to its R1 reasoning model as a far cheaper alternative to OpenAI’s o1 and Claude 3.5—an estimated 93% cheaper! - In its response, OpenAI made its model free on Friday.
As a consequence, the new kid on the block, DeepSeek, caused some serious damage to some of the most prolific techies and investors’ pockets. To give you an idea, the world’s 500 richest people, led by Nvidia's Jensen Huang, lost $108 billion on Monday due to a tech selloff. Among them, AI-connected billionaires were hit hardest: Huang’s fortune dropped by $20.1bn (20%), Oracle's Larry Ellison lost $22.6bn (12%), Dell's Michael Dell lost $13bn, and Binance's Changpeng Zhao saw a $12.1bn loss.
However, affordability is not the only value proposition from DeepSeek. It also offers its open-source model for developers to host, fine-tune, and run on their own infrastructure. With optimised architecture that uses less memory and no rate limits, the approach is a big game-changer. Experts have long predicted that foundational models would eventually become commodities, and DeepSeek is now turning that prediction into reality.
For startups, however, especially those leveraging third-party models, the R1 release is good news. With inference costs dropping like never before, and the lack of rate limits, DeepSeek's model will only get cheaper as time goes on, leaving investors scrambling to reevaluate their bets. For now, with VC funding for foundational models surging to a record $40bn in 2024, DeepSeek’s rise is a wake-up call to an industry.
Analysis
IT infrastructure deals drive M&A revival.
Fuelled by the AI boom, investor demand for digital infrastructure and software reignited IT M&A in 2024, the newly-released report finds, with deal value surging 46% to $741bn—accounting for 21% of global M&A, second only to B2B.
In June, Vantage Data Centers secured $9.2bn from four PE firms, including DigitalBridge Group and Silver Lake, to expand AI and cloud-focused data centers.
Beyond data centers, software deals supporting AI development surged. US software PE deals hit $134.8bn, up 32% YoY, with seven of the top 10 US deals being software buyouts. The largest IT deal was Siemens’ $10.6bn acquisition of Altair Engineering, an AI-focused engineering software firm.
It looks like thanks to the IT sector, M&A deal value has climbed back above pre-pandemic levels.
Community
Soft Launch - Female Innovation Index 2025
What a week it has been!
A huge thank you to everyone who joined us for our Soft Launch! The discussion panels were insightful, the celebration was fantastic, and we loved sharing an early glimpse of the data with you.
Thanks to Mariam Ahmed (Founder, Menza), Piotr Bukanski (VC Investor at Beringea), Hailey Eustace (angel investor), and Jessica Corry (Founder, Xterna), Murvah Iqbal (Founder, HIVED), Shamillah Bankiya (Dawn Capital), Aaron Archer (Cooley), and Tom Simmons (the London Stock Exchange) who joined the discussions.
Thank you to our anchor sponsors Google Cloud, the London Stock Exchange, and Cooley LLP—and our associate sponsors, HSBC Innovation Banking and Carta, and Accenture Fintech Innovation Lab - for your invaluable support!
I’m sharing a few pictures from the event below.
Now, get ready for the full release of the 2025 Edition of the Index at the Official Launch Event on March 3rd! Join us in person or online to explore the complete findings and be part of this major milestone.
Official Launch Event Registration
For those of you who will be on the in London on the 3rd of March, make sure to register to join the Official Launch of the Female Innovation Index in person! - We have limited places, so do sign up early!
If you are not in London and would like to join the live-streamed version of the Launch of the Index, please register online. - It will be as interesting!
Looking forward to seeing you there!
Hiring
This week hiring:
Abolis Biotechnologies ➯ Technicien Système Réseaux | Abound ➯ Compliance Officer | Carmoola ➯ Chief of Staff | Twin Science & Robotics ➯ Channel Sales Manager | Prewave ➯ Product Analyst.
Events this Week
Tuesday, February 4, London ➯ Prolific Winter Summit 2025 | Thursday, February 6, Amsterdam ➯ AI Builders | Friday, February 7, Amsterdam ➯ Quantum Futures, Berlin ➯ Pre YC X25 AI Hackathon.
Enjoy your weekend. See you on Sunday!
Agata
Written by Agata Leliwa Nowicka, the Managing Partner of the Visionaries AI Incubator, an investor, a startup adviser, a two-time entrepreneur based in London.
♡ Thank you Alice for helping out with the research!
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