Female Foundry Week 145: On the Sidelines. Raising in the AI Era. Surprising Buyers. Female Foundry x Tech.eu Summit.
Welcome to The Week 145, 2024 Edition of the Female Foundry newsletter!
Female Foundry - the Future of Venture is Here.
In the news
Spanish SaaS startup flowww, co-founded by Natalia Villora, lands a €4m Series A round led by Swanlaab Venture Factory and Bonsai Partners to scale across Europe and Latin America; Cologne-based startup Vytal Global, co-founded by Josephine Kreische, bags a €14.2m Series A led by Inven Capital to scale tech-driven reusable packaging solutions; Dutch food-tech startup Cano-ELA, co-founded by Juliana Romero, secures a €1.6m Seed round led by Oost NL to accelerate development of seed-based ingredients; London-based e-commerce delivery startup Relay, co-founded by Nicole Mazza, secures a $35m Series A round led by Plural to rewire e-commerce delivery; London-based pharmatech Ignota Labs, co-founded by Layla Hosseini-Gerami, secures a $6.9m Seed round co-led by Montage Ventures and AIX Ventures for its drug discovery startup; Swiss cleantech Verretex, co-founded by Lidia Rocoffort de Vinnière and Nour Halawani, picks up a €159k Pre-Seed round led by Venture Kick to transform damaged glass fibres into high-performance textiles; Amsterdam-based AI startup LangWatch, co-founded by Manouk Draisma, fetches a €1m Pre-Seed round led by Passion Capital for LLM optimisation; Dutch quantum startup QT Sense, co-founded by Romana Schirhagl, lands a €6m funding round led by QDNL Participations for quantum-powered disease detection; Cambridge-based startup Monument Therapeutics, co-founded by Jenny Barnett, secures a £850k funding round led by o2h Ventures to advance schizophrenia treatment; Helsinki-based medtech Solid IO, co-founded by Noora Hujala and Heidi Haikala, raises a €800K funding round led by Nordic Science Investments to transform cancer treatment with tumour-on-chip technology; Estonian deeptech GaltTec, co-founded by Laura Elise Arvisto, picks up a €1m Pre-Seed round led by 2C Ventures to power drones and IoT devices with next-generation fuel cells; Portuguese aquaculture company SEAentia, co-founded by Sónia Rito, bags a €16m Series A round led by Indico Capital Partners’ Blue Fund for sustainable Corvina aquaculture; Amsterdam-based advanced materials startup CarbonX, co-founded by Daniela Sordi, raises a €2.5m Accelerator Grant from the European Innovation Council (EIC) to accelerate development of its 3D carbon structures; Milan-based company Arsenale Bioyards, co-founded by Gordana Djordjevic, lands a $10m Seed round co-led by Planet A and byFounders to transform biomanufacturing with modular industrial bioyards.
Italy’s Vento Ventures, a private early-stage venture capital fund, co-founded by Diyala D’Aveni, Isabella Timossi, Martina Vinci, Camilla Calcagno and Elena Calconi, announces the launch of its second fund at €75m over the next five years to find the boldest Italian startup founders globally.
Spotlight
On the Sidelines.
It looks like M&A has gotten off to an excruciatingly slow start: US M&A volumes in January were the lowest they’ve been in 10 years, and February wasn’t rosy either - it’s reported that Media M&A has plunged by 40% in 2025.
The number of deals has dropped most significantly among the biggest players, such as Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, as the antitrust landscape in both the US and Europe has created major hurdles for large tech acquisitions. (Do you remember Adobe’s attempted acquisition of Figma?)
Dealmakers now need to factor in the EU’s AI Act, which became law last year. The Act applies to AI systems developed anywhere, as long as they are marketed or put into service within the EU, impacting both developers and corporate users of AI. The penalties for non-compliance are hefty, with fines up to 7% of global turnover or €35m - similar regulations are also being introduced worldwide.
Microsoft, for example, hasn’t acquired a single company in the past 18 months—aside from its unusual deal for Inflection AI’s talent and tech licenses, which has so far avoided regulatory scrutiny.
With Big Tech stepping back from its usual M&A activity, much of the capital that would have gone toward acquisitions is now being funnelled into AI infrastructure buildouts…
Fundraising
Raising in the AI Era.
It’s been a busy week. On Wednesday, I led a discussion on the agentic future at the London AI Hub, and for the rest of the week, I was in Paris presenting the findings of the Female Innovation Index 2025 at the newly launched WomenINvestEU initiative by the EIC and the European Union. I also had the chance to catch up with a few founder friends in Paris and connect with deeptech founders at Hello Tomorrow.
One key insight that stuck with me after speaking with AI and deeptech founders in London and Paris is that the venture capital game is changing for both founders and investors.
Founders are increasingly choosing to bootstrap (thanks to AI) as long as possible until they hit that £1m in revenue, which then opens up more options for growth (debt financing). My friend in Paris who has bootstrapped his fintech business with just three people, and is now seeing a huge sales momentum by leveraging AI says he is very unlikely to raise any dilutive capital until exit. What about founders that have already taken VC capital? For founders who’ve taken institutional capital, the pressure to hit that £1m ARR faster has never been greater (VCs are more-than-ever focused on the breakouts).
What does it mean for VC funds? Proving value beyond just providing capital is becoming more important than ever. While equity has always been expensive, the growth opportunities with AI—where fixed costs and hiring can be minimised—mean that VCs now need to bring something extra to the table for founders to be appealing. Nimble, high-value Pre-Seed funds and angels have an advantage (before the company hits out-of-reach valuation). In contrast, Series A and Seed stage funds are a bit left in a blind spot, with AI startups commanding high valuations and companies that have raised Pre-Seed capital staying self-sustained for longer (sometimes skipping Series A or Seed altogether).
How are you thinking about your growth and your fundraising roadmaps?
Analysis
Surprising Buyers.
As large public tech firms scale back on startup acquisitions (see above), venture-backed companies are increasingly stepping in to fill the gap. In 2024, over a third of US startup acquisitions involved another VC-backed company as the buyer, a steady rise from just over 20% in 2018, freshly-released data shows. With an estimated 956 sales of venture-backed startups last year, the activity remains near record highs.
What’s driving the trend? Late-stage startups have accumulated sufficient capital to fund M&A deals and are using them as the way to sustain growth. Unless more late-stage companies transition to public markets or become acquisition targets themselves, this trend is expected to continue.
Community
Female Foundry x Tech.eu Summit
Female Foundry is an official partner of Tech.eu Summit taking place on the 25-26th March 2024 in London and we have 3x £750 + VAT tickets to give away to the Female Foundry community!
I’m one of the speakers joining the Summit, get your ticket here and let’s meet!
To enter the FREE ticket draw, submit your interest below. Deadline: March 21, 10pm GMT. T&C of Tech.eu Summit apply. I will announce the winners here next week. Good luck!
Hiring
This week hiring:
Trinny ➯ Operations Director | Planet A Foods ➯ Business Development Internship | Pigment ➯ Entreprise Account Executive.
Events This Week
Monday, March 17, Berlin ➯ Techspace x Leader Labs People Meetup | Wednesday, March 19, London ➯ Climate Adaptation Tech Drinks, Paris ➯ The French State of AI | Thursday, March 20, London ➯ London Fintech Breakfast.
On the 26th of March CONEXEN Oxford is hosting an event for professionals and founders in biopharma, life sciences, and health tech! If you are a healthtech founder, join this informal and friendly gathering by registering ➯ HERE.
Have a great rest of the weekend!
Agata
Written by Agata Leliwa Nowicka, an investor, a startup adviser, a two-time entrepreneur, and a founder of Female Foundry based in London.
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