Female founders are optimistic that AI could solve challenges they face funding and scaling startups

– Founding story. Forty percent of female founders say that macroeconomic conditions have hurt their businesses—and 46% say that political uncertainty in the U.S. is a direct threat, too. But amid the challenges of tariffs, weakened consumer confidence, and political attacks on diversity and inclusion, female founders see opportunity in other areas—namely, AI.

The early-stage VC firm Graham & Walker gathered these results from a survey of 180 female founders of “VC scalable” startups in North America.

Fifty-six percent of all-female founding teams see “more opportunities” because of AI, compared to only 46% of mixed-gender founding teams who say the same. This report speculates that female founders—who also cite fundraising as, still, a major challenge—could be looking at AI as a way to scale with less capital and avoid some of those fundraising challenges. Seventy-one percent of founders surveyed said raising their last round was harder than they thought it would be. Forty percent of founders still say their gender was a top factor in that difficulty. In 2024, according to Pitchbook, teams including female founders raised 27% more capital than the year prior, with $38 billion closed—but across 13.1% fewer deals than 2023.

Other fundraising challenges include “shifting goalposts”—with norms changing for early-stage funding and early-stage investors expecting founders to meet benchmarks that might have previously been reserved for Series A.

Fourteen founders in the survey specifically called out their experiences with female investors. Many of the concerns they raised are likely related to the pressure those female investors are under. One founder surveyed said female investors are “harder to win over” and “require every box to be checked,” while another said that they’ve pitched women who have “no real ability to do deals.”

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com

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