Women-Led Startups Still Struggle for Venture Capital Funding

Despite a significant increase in funding for women-only startup founders in New Zealand, they still received less than six cents of every dollar invested in venture capital last year. According to research from the Aotearoa Centre for Enterprising Women at the University of Auckland Business School, women-only founding teams attracted $14.75 million in disclosed investment from venture capital firms in 2025, more than triple the $4.59m raised the previous year.

This represents a doubling of their share of total disclosed capital from 2.9 percent to 5.94 percent, but the gap between women-only and male-only founding teams remains significant. Male-only founding teams received $172.35m, or 69.42 percent of disclosed capital, while mixed-gender teams received $61.17m, or 24.64 percent.

Gender Investment Gap co-founder Jenny Rudd noted that the improvement was encouraging but not yet meaningful enough to celebrate. She pointed out that women-only founding teams accounted for about 12 percent of all deals but received only about 6 percent of the money.