In a notable week for female-led startups, European ventures helmed by women secured approximately €21.78 million in funding, underscoring the growing influence of women in the tech and innovation sectors. This trend aligns with broader movements in the European startup ecosystem, where female-founded companies are increasingly making their mark.
The diversity of sectors represented demonstrates the wide-ranging impact of female entrepreneurs across Europe. Notably, countries like Germany, the UK, Spain, and the Netherlands also featured prominently, reflecting a pan-European momentum in supporting women-led ventures.
Below is a detailed breakdown of the female-founded startups that secured funding this week, showcasing the breadth and depth of innovation driven by women across the continent.
Penzilla (Germany)
Founder/s: Christoph Leser, Catherine Leser
Founded year: 2021
Recent funding: €3.2M
Munich-based HR tech startup Penzilla offers a digital platform for managing occupational pension schemes. By integrating with HR and payroll systems, it automates pension workflows, providing transparency and efficiency for both employers and employees. The goal is to make occupational pensions simpler, more accessible and more efficient, for employers and employees alike. Their platform helps companies assume social responsibility, while employees reportedly receive a fair and transparent pension plan.
With the recent €3.2 million seed funding, led by Acadian Ventures and Delin Ventures, with participation from Robin Capital, Motive Ventures, WENVEST Capital, and angel investor Diana zur Löwen. With this funding, Penzilla plans to invest in market development and strengthen its position as the leading software platform for the management of company pension schemes.
SCALARA (Germany)
Founder/s: Shari Heep
Founded year: 2020
Recent funding: €3M
SCALARA is a German proptech startup specialising in digital property management solutions. Its platform offers an all-in-one interface for managing condominiums, rentals, and special properties, integrating certified accounting, document management, and communication tools. SCALARA addresses the complexities of property management, including compliance with regulations like Germany’s Building Energy Act (GEG). .
The company’s €3 million investment came from BfW Bank, marking the bank’s first investment in a proptech firm. The investment includes €1.5 million in shares acquired from existing investors, demonstrating a long-term commitment. Additionally, partners like BeyondBuild, Bauwens, and neoteq ventures converted approximately €2 million in convertible loans.
The funds will be used to enhance SCALARA’s platform with integrated banking tools, digital workflows, and automated payment reconciliation systems, aiming to reduce administrative burdens and improve efficiency in property management.
Busup (Spain)
Founder/s: Rui Stoffel Fernandes, Alejandro Canals, Eva Romagosa
Founded year: 2011
Recent funding: $3.2M
Next on our list is Spanish startup Busup, a corporate mobility service provider specialising in the efficient and flexible management of employee transportation. Operating in the EU and Latin America, Busup offers shared and flexible transportation solutions, aiming to optimise commuting experiences for companies and their employees.
The company recently raised $3.2 million in funding from True Global Ventures to enhance its platform and expand its services to new markets. The investment will enable Busup to continue innovating in the corporate mobility space and strengthen its position as a leader in employee transportation solutions.
Zendo (UK)
Founder/s: Jade Batstone
Founded year: 2024
Recent funding: $2.2M
Zendo is a UK-based startup building an “Energy OS” to decarbonise data centre computing. Its platform intelligently manages and optimises energy consumption, helping data centres run more efficiently and sustainably. By integrating software intelligence with energy infrastructure, Zendo addresses the growing environmental impact of digital operations. The solution is designed for hyperscalers and other data-heavy enterprises seeking to reduce carbon emissions while improving operational performance and aligning with sustainability goals.
Last week, the company snapped $2.2 million in a pre-seed funding round to develop its Energy OS platform. The investment will be used to expand its technical team, refine the platform, and accelerate pilot deployments with data center partners. Backers of this round include Fly Ventures, Octopus Ventures, and Pact VC.
Voyc (Netherlands)
Founder/s: Matthew Westaway, Lethabo Motsoaledi
Founded year: 2018
Recent funding: $2M
Voyc, a Dutch startup, specialises in AI-driven conversation intelligence and compliance monitoring for financial services firms. Its platform enables operations and quality assurance managers to monitor all customer interactions, helping with risk identification and process efficiency. It supports over 80 financial services firms, monitoring three million customer conversations and reviewing 40,000 calls each month to improve customer outcomes and operations.
A few days back, Voyc secured €1.7 million in seed funding, led by the family office of a co-founder of a major SaaS company that went public on Nasdaq and reached a $6B exit after expanding from the UK to the US. The round also included reinvestments from six angel investors, including Anton Musgrave, a Senior Partner at FutureWorld.
The funds will be used to develop its AI platform by launching two new products: real-time AI copilots and an autonomous AI service agent that handles inbound customer calls in real-time. These technologies are designed to reduce wait times, improve operations, and support customer service functions.
InBrain Pharma (France)
Founder/s: Dr. Matthieu Fisichella, David Devos, Caroline Moreau
Founded year: 2018
Recent funding: €1.8M
French clinical-stage biotech startup based in InBrain Pharma specialises in developing therapeutic solutions for neurodegenerative diseases. The company focuses on a novel approach to treating advanced Parkinson’s disease through the intracerebroventricular infusion of anaerobic dopamine (A-dopamine), which overcomes the limitations of traditional dopamine therapies that cannot cross the blood-brain barrier. This method aims to provide more effective symptom control for patients who are unresponsive to existing treatments.
Recently, InBrain Pharma secured €1.8 million in funding from France’s “First Factory” initiative, part of the France 2030 plan, to support its PERCEPAR project. The funding will facilitate the production of clinical batches for a Phase III trial in 2026 and future commercial batches, marking a significant step toward bringing this innovative therapy to market.
Bloom Money (UK)
Founder/s: Nina Mohanty, Dan James
Founded year: 2021
Recent funding: £1.5M
Bloom Money is a UK-based fintech company focused on digitising traditional community savings practices, particularly the rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs), to serve migrant and ethnic communities. These informal financial systems involve groups pooling and rotating funds to support each other. Bloom Money’s platform modernises this concept, providing a secure, regulated digital environment that fosters trust and financial inclusion for underserved populations.
Recently, the company bagged £1.5 million in a fresh investment. It aims to build a financial app catered to traditional money-saving methods used by immigrant communities in the West.
En Carta Diagnostics (France)
Founder/s: Guillaume Horréard, Margot Karlikow
Founded year: 2022
Recent funding: $1.5M
French biotech startup En Carta Diagnostics specialises in developing low-cost, high-accuracy paper-based diagnostic tools designed to detect pandemics, epidemics, and bacterial resistance. The company operates in the biotech and smart pharma sectors, serving healthcare providers, laboratories, and medical institutions. En Carta’s core technology leverages cell-free systems to create point-of-care nucleic acid diagnostics for diseases such as HIV, TB, and HPV, with precision down to the single nucleotide level and costs below $1.
Recently, En Carta Diagnostics picked up $1.5 million in seed funding to advance its efforts in decentralising diagnostics.
BASH (Netherlands)
Founder/s: Elise Mol, Joris Oudejans
Founded year: 2020
Recent funding: €1.3M
BASH is an Amsterdam-based social event platform centralises all guest interactions, event details, ticketing, media, guest lists, and user responses, on a single page, enabling organisers to convert past attendees into returning visitors. Through targeted invites and real-time updates via email or push notifications, BASH fosters repeated engagement and earlier ticket sales. This streamlined approach has led to a 20–50% increase in ticket sales for promoters like DARKMODE, Kantje Boord, and Y.U.C., without additional marketing costs.
Now, the company landed €1.3 million in a super-seed funding round from angel investors, including entrepreneurs Sjuul Berden (United Wardrobe), Leon Ramakers (Mojo), and Geert-Jan Smits (Flinders). This investment aims to support BASH’s expansion within the Netherlands and across Europe by growing its sales team and extending its proven model beyond Amsterdam. The funding will help the company capitalise on local usage patterns, organiser demand, and track outcomes to increase its reach during this growth phase.
Legapass (France)
Founder/s: Jean-Charles CheminEric Maïda, Adelina Prokhorova
Founded year: 2021
Recent funding: €1.2M
French legaltech startup Legapass specialises in the secure transmission of digital assets and estate planning. It offers tools like Radar, which identifies forgotten financial, real estate, or digital assets globally, and VigiNot, an automated compliance solution for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML-CTF) protocols tailored for notaries. By integrating advanced encryption and offline storage, Legapass ensures the protection and efficient management of sensitive data in the notarial sector.
The recent €1.2 million funding came from ADNEXUS, the legaltech-focused fund of Groupe ADSN, alongside Techmind. This capital infusion aims to enhance Legapass’s technological solutions for notaries, particularly in automating AML-CTF compliance and asset detection processes, thereby supporting the digital transformation and regulatory efficiency of notarial practices.
Pleso (Ukraine)
Founder/s: Oleksandr Bondariev, Anna Lissova, Oleksiy Yakubenko, Vitalii Marchenko
Founded year: 2021
Recent funding: $1.2M
Ukrainian AI-powered mental health platform Pleso connects individuals and corporate clients with certified therapists through a secure online system. The platform employs AI-driven matching algorithms to personalise therapist selection, aiming to enhance accessibility and destigmatise mental healthcare across Europe. It has facilitated over 150,000 therapy sessions for more than 20,000 users.
Pleso secured $1.2 million in funding from investors including Vchasno Group, TA Ventures, and angel investor Oleksandr Usyk. The investment will support the company’s European expansion, development of AI features for deeper personalisation, and scaling of its B2B services.
The funds will also aid in building a robust team of marketing and product specialists to further the platform’s growth.
APlanet (Spain)
Founder/s: Cyril Pierre, Joana Paredes Alves, Johanna Gallo, Javier Llorden
Founded year: 2019
Recent funding: €360K
APlanet enables organisations to efficiently manage and report their sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities. By aligning organisational strategies with Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria, APlanet facilitates compliance with non-financial reporting requirements. Its system automates the collection and analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data, replacing manual spreadsheets, and supports reporting based on global standards like the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). The platform aids in risk reduction, informed decision-making, and resource optimisation.
In its recent funding round, APlanet secured €360K through the CDTI Cervera Program, with €109K as a non-repayable grant. This funding aims to transform APlanet’s architecture into a Big Data framework, enabling real-time analysis and forecasting of sustainability metrics. Intelectium assisted APlanet in obtaining this funding, which will support the company’s technological advancement and continued growth.
Sproud (Sweden)
Founder/s: Christopher Robertson, Maria Tegman, Nicklas Jungberg
Founded year: 2018
Recent funding: NA
Swedish startup Sproud specialises in pea protein-based milk alternatives. Its product line includes unsweetened, barista, sugar-free barista, vanilla, and chocolate flavours, along with ready-to-drink iced lattes and a versatile 2-in-1 cream alternative. Positioned as a sustainable and nutritious option, Sproud’s offerings boast higher protein content and lower sugar levels compared to many competitors.
Last week, Sproud raised funding from Lantmännen Biorefineries, Sweden’s largest farmer cooperative. This investment supports Lantmännen’s plans to construct a 1.2 billion SEK pea protein facility in Lidköping, aiming to process 40,000 tonnes of peas annually.
