Female Foundry Week 143: Nothing stays still. Soon, soon: Female Innovation Index 2025 Launch. SPVs are on the raise. Visionaries: Pipeline Organics.
Welcome to The Week 143, 2025 Edition of the Female Foundry newsletter!
Female Foundry - the Future of Venture is here.
As we are one week away from the Official Launch of the Female Innovation Index, here is a slightly-shorter version of the weekly newsletter. Happy Sunday!
In the news
Barcelona-based biotech ZYMVOL, founded by Maria Fátima Lucas, secures a €3m Seed round led by Faber Ventures for computational enzyme discovery and design; Spanish startup RepScan, co-founded by Mar Jufresa, secures a €3m Series A round led by Swanlaab Venture Factory for negative online content removal; London-based healthtech Level Zero Health, founded by Ula Rustamova and Irene Jia, raises a £5.5m Pre-seed round led by Redalpine to develop continuous hormone monitoring technology; French Ochy, co-founded by Perrine Chapot, picks up a €1.7m Pre-seed round led by Redstone's Social Impact Fund to help runners stay injury-free with AI-powered platform; Also London-based legaltech Augmetec, co-founded by Jennifer Ratz, secures over €2.4m in Seed funding led by Fuel Ventures to advance its flagship platform; Cambridge-based Cambridge GaN Devices (CGD), co-founded by Dr. Giorgia Longobardi, lands a €30.5m Series C round from multiple investors including British Patient Capital to drive global growth in the power semiconductor industry; Italian biotech ExoLab Italia, co-founded by Mariantonia Logozzi, raises a €5m Series A round led by DSM-Firmenich Ventures to scale plant exosome innovation globally; Berlin-based snuggs, co-founded by Linda Šejdová, bags a €5m funding round led by TripleB to reinvent period products.
Barcelona-based venture capital firm 4Founders Capital, co-founded by Paula Blázquez, launches its third fund, 4Founders Capital III, securing an initial €44m to invest in early-stage technology startups.
Spotlight
Nothing stays still.
Softbank, the company behind the famed Vision Fund, and the backer of Uber and DoorDash, announced last week a partnership with OpenAI to ‘develop and market advance enterprise AI’. Why is it interesting? The partnership, if successful has the potential to reshape of the entire AI industry.
For years, Microsoft has been the backbone of OpenAI’s infrastructure, providing the majority of its cloud computing needs. However, recently the relationship seems to have soured, with many executives leaving (btw. famed ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati announced the launch of her AI startup Thinking Machines Lab this week, poaching some of the 20 top OpenAI researchers). Now OpenAI forecasts that three-quarters (!) of its data centre capacity will come from Stargate, recently announced by Donald Trump ..and backed heavily ($19bn heavily) by SoftBank.
SoftBank’s involvement in OpenAI is particularly intriguing, given its own financial rollercoaster. Just last week, the investment giant reported a net loss of nearly $2.4bn (largely due to declining share prices in companies like Coupang and Didi) for its fiscal third quarter.
And yet, it remains undeterred in its push into AI, reportedly planning to invest further $40bn into OpenAI at an eye-watering $260bn valuation. Further, it recently co-led a $300m Series A for AI robotics startup Skild AI, valued at $1.5bn, and led London-based self-driving car startup Wayve’s $1.1bn round. And those are just a few of the more prominent bets. Just in the past few weeks, SoftBank also bet its money on AI-powered search startup Perplexity, AI-based enterprise software firm Glean, and cybersecurity firm Wiz.
Amid all this, OpenAI’s own costs are set to skyrocket. The company reportedly expects to burn through $20bn in cash in 2027, a sharp rise from the $5bn it spent in 2024. And while it still plans to increase spending on Microsoft-owned data centres in the short term, its long-term bet on Stargate and a gradual but deliberate shift away from its most dominant backer, is a reminder that in the world of AI, nothing stays still for long.
Fundraising
Closer & closer! Official Launch - Female Innovation Index 2025.
It’s only one week to go when we officially launch the 2025 Edition of the Female Innovation Index - Europe's biggest report on the funnel of innovation and funding driven by female entrepreneurs, on Monday, 3rd March 2025 at Google HQ in London.
We will have three discussion panels and I will share lots of never-seen-before insights and data. - The evening will bring together investors, entrepreneurs and European venture ecosystem leaders and will be a fantastic networking opportunity!
With over 350 registered, we are now nearing our registration capacity - I have reserved 15x tickets for the Female Foundry Newsletter readers.
For those of you who would like to join, make sure to register now.
If you cannot join in London, make sure to join the live-stream of the London event, by registering here:
Looking forward to it!
Analysis
SPVs are on the raise.
As fundraising challenges persist, emerging VC fund managers are increasingly using special purpose vehicles (SPVs) to lure their potential LP investors—and the trend is gaining momentum. Recent data reveals a 31% increase in annual new SPV deals compared to three years ago and a 116% rise from five years ago.
Also, SPV median deal sizes are growing. A typical SPV deal size, has nearly doubled since 2016 to $2.17m by 2023. In the U.S., 769 SPV deals were completed for venture-backed startups in 2024, up from 522 in 2023 and 274 in 2022. More than 35% of these deals were at the seed stage. Additionally, the median number of investors per SPV rose from eight in 2022 to nine in 2024, while the average climbed from 11 to 16.5.
Meet the Visionary
Pipeline Organics
‘We maximise nature's potential to become the essential energy solution.’
This week, I would like to introduce you to Pipeline Organics, one of six companies in Cohort II of our Visionaries AI Incubator in partnership with Google Cloud.
Do you know that almost 25% of all greenhouse gas emissions come from the energy to power the industry? And 18% of that comes from the food processing industry.
Meet Arielle Torres, Andrew Raslan, Eric Lehder and Keyvan Jodeiri - the founding team of Pipeline Organics - an AI-enabled biofuel cell technology company that harnesses industrial waste to generate renewable energy.
To date, Pipeline organics has raised €2.2m from CCEP Ventures, SFC Capital, Vala Capital, XTX Ventures and has secured a major pilot with a Coca Cola manufacturing plant.
Current team’s focus?
Building out their portfolio of case studies with beverage manufacturers. The team is looking for intros to beverage manufacturers and companies in beverage production supply chain, and is looking to start their next fundraise Q2 2026.
Want to get in touch? Drop an email to Arielle ➯ here and follow the team ➯ here.
Check other female-founded companies in Cohort II.
Hiring
Hiring this week:
Anima ➯ Strategic Account Director | Prewave ➯ Mid-Market Account Manager | Abound ➯ Customer Service Specialist | Datamaran ➯ ESG Enterprise Account Executive.
Events this Week
Tuesday, February 25, London ➯ NoCode Drinks, Zurich ➯ Bits in Bio Drinks | Wednesday, February 26, London ➯ Tech & Tonic Social, Berlin ➯ Female Founder Stories | Thursday, February 27, Berlin ➯ Climathon Berlin - Pitch Summit, ➯ Deep Tech Night, Copenhagen ➯ Women of SaaS Copenhagen – Metrics that Matter.
On the 27th of February (yep, next week!) Antler is hosting an exclusive fireside chat with an absolute rockstar, Dimple Patel, CEO of NatureMetrics - to hear about her journey from banking to entrepreneurship and the lessons she’s learned about building and scaling a high-growth company, register here.
This will be a busy week. 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!
Suggestions? Drop me an email.
Check femalefoundry.co for more fundraising tools and investor content. View other Female Foundry articles.
SoftBank moves like a gambler who’s both winning and losing at the same time, $2.4B loss last week, yet doubling down on AI with a $40B OpenAI bet. If Stargate truly becomes OpenAI’s backbone, Microsoft might find itself on the sidelines of the AI revolution. Great article as always.
Massive respect for the incredible female founders securing funding and reshaping industries. The rise of SPVs, SoftBank’s aggressive AI bets, and OpenAI’s shifting alliances make for a thrilling landscape. Also the female innovation index 2025 launch is a game-changer,can't wait to see the insights it brings