Europe’s AI boom is leaving femtech behind

Summary

Venture capital in Europe has heavily favoured AI, leaving femtech — innovation focused on women’s health — underfunded and overlooked. After a 2021 peak of €1.89bn globally, femtech investment plunged, and by 2023 European femtech captured only €164m of €8.3bn in healthtech funding. Many femtech startups have raised nothing despite forecasts of a €30bn European market by 2032. The article argues this imbalance risks worsening existing health crises for women, as AI investment often neglects healthcare specialisation and can perpetuate gender bias when trained on male-default data.

The piece highlights real human costs — long diagnostic delays for conditions such as endometriosis and underdiagnosis of PCOS — and shows that female-only founding teams get a minuscule share of VC. It calls for reframing femtech from ‘niche’ to essential infrastructure, building femtech-dedicated funds, backing women-led investor teams, and rebalancing public R&D funding so women’s health receives proportional support.

Key Points

AI received disproportionate VC attention in recent years, coinciding with a sharp fall in femtech funding after 2021.
In 2023 European femtech raised only €164m out of €8.3bn in healthtech funding — a stark funding gap versus US femtech.
44% of European femtech startups have not raised any funding, despite a projected €30bn market by 2032.
AI systems trained on biased data can reinforce male-default medical assumptions, risking misdiagnoses and delayed care for women.
Female-only founding teams received around 2% of global VC funding in 2024; male-only teams received the vast majority.
Recommendations: create femtech-focused funds, support women-led investor networks, and rebalance public R&D to include women’s health proportionally.

Why should I read this?

Quick and blunt: if you care about real returns, public health, or not letting half the population become an afterthought, this matters. The piece cuts through the hype to show how chasing the next AI shiny thing is leaving proven women’s-health solutions stranded. It’s short, sharp and worth the five-minute read because the consequences are financial, social and medical — and fixable if investors and policymakers stop ignoring them.

Context and Relevance

This article matters in the context of two big trends: the surge of AI investment and an ongoing global reckoning over gender gaps in healthcare. Europe historically led in femtech and gender-sensitive healthcare policy; unchecked AI capital concentration threatens that position. For VCs, health-tech founders, policymakers and healthcare providers, the story underlines a wider need for diversified capital allocation and gender-aware R&D policy. Supporting femtech is both a social imperative and an untapped market opportunity.