Female founders in 2026: what the numbers say

The latest figures show where investment goes. To find out what female founders actually need, we’re asking them.

Every year, a new set of figures lands on how much investment goes to female founders. And every year, the headline is much the same.

The numbers matter. They show where money goes and where it doesn’t. But they only tell part of the story, and they say very little about what it’s really like to build a business as a woman in the UK right now.

Here, Laura Wiggins, Investment Director at YFM, looks at what the latest data shows, where it falls short, and why YFM is asking female founders directly what they need.

If you’re a female founder, you can add your voice to our survey before it closes on Friday 30 October: Complete the Survey 

• In 2025, companies with at least one female founder took part in a quarter of UK equity investments but received only 15% of the money invested.
• All-female founder teams received 2% of the money invested, the same share as in 2024.
• 337 organisations have now signed the Investing in Women Code, and signatories have backed female founders more than the wider market for six years running.
• Despite the funding gap, 333 UK businesses founded or co-founded by women have now passed £50m in turnover, up from 144 a year ago.
• Funding data shows where money goes, but not what founders need to grow. YFM’s survey asks female founders that question directly.

Female founders still receive a small share of UK equity investment, and the latest figures show little change. The Investing in Women Code annual report 2026, published by the Department for Business and Trade, found that in 2025:

• companies with at least one female founder took part in 25% of UK equity investments, slightly down in 2024
• those companies received 15% of the total value invested, two percentage points lower than the year before
• all-female founder teams accounted for 7% of investments and 2% of the value invested, both unchanged in 2024

The gap between those figures matters. Women are involved in one in four funding rounds but receive only around one pound in every seven invested.

“The funding landscape for women building businesses remains as challenging as ever,” says Laura. “This isn’t helped by an increasingly difficult economic backdrop, which can often increase the barriers to accessing the right types of finance. That makes it all the more important that investors listen to what founders actually need, rather than assuming they already know.”

The Rose Review, an independent review of female entrepreneurship commissioned by HM Treasury and led by Alison Rose, was published in 2019. It looked at the barriers women face in starting and growing businesses, and it has changed how investors are held to account. Its first recommendation was the Investing in Women Code, launched the same year.

Organisations that sign the Code commit to adopting practices that improve women entrepreneurs’ access to finance, and to reporting their investment data by gender every year. The Code has grown from 12 founding signatories to 337 organisations as of March 2026. YFM has been a signatory since 2022.

Across the equity investors who have signed the Code, the reporting is starting to show results. For the sixth year running, they directed a greater share of investment to businesses with female founders than the wider market: 32% of the money they invested in 2025 went to teams with at least one female founder, compared with 15% across the market as a whole.

The Invest in Women Taskforce, set up with the aim of making the UK the best place in the world for female founders, is also bringing in new capital aimed at women-led businesses. Its £635m funding pool deployed more than £70m in its first year.

Progress is real, but slow. The same report is clear that women-led businesses still receive a fraction of total funding.

Most headline funding data is dominated by venture capital: early-stage, high-growth investment, often in technology. Many successful businesses never take that route. They grow from their own revenue and profits, sometimes for years, before outside investment makes sense, and when it does, it may be growth capital or a buyout rather than venture funding.

So a small share of venture investment doesn’t mean women aren’t building substantial businesses. The evidence points the other way.

Despite the challenges in accessing finance, more women are building businesses at real scale than ever before. The Super Scaler Female Index 2026, produced by The SuperScalers with the ScaleUp Institute, counts 333 UK businesses founded or co-founded by women that have passed £50m in turnover. That’s up from 144 last year, and 80 three years ago.

These are not start-ups. Together, these businesses employ 284,555 people and generate £44.7bn in turnover. Their founders have overcome the barriers in front of them to build them, and they have a great deal to teach those coming next.

Funding data shows where money goes, but it can’t show what is holding founders back, what support would make the biggest difference, or whether funding is even the main problem.

There are clues. The Investing in Women Code report found that women-led businesses were more likely than male-led ones to see higher costs (38%) and the economic climate (41%) as major barriers, while only 6% named access to finance.

To get beyond the clues, YFM is running a short survey for female founders. It asks about the biggest barriers to growth, the support, connections and expertise founders need, and the kinds of events they would find genuinely valuable.

“Investors see such a small part of the lived experience of female founders,” says Laura, “and even those with the best intentions may not hit the mark with the support they assume founders need. We want to do things differently, and hope that by asking founders directly, we can develop a suite of support that genuinely changes the game.”

Numbers can show a gap. Only founders can explain it.

If you’re a female founder, whether you’re just starting out, raising investment or running an established business, please take two minutes to complete the survey here before it closes on Friday 30 October. Your answers will shape the content, events and support YFM builds next.

We’ll share what founders told us here on the Entrepreneur Lab once the survey has closed.

In the meantime, if you’d like to talk about your next stage of growth, the YFM team is happy to have that conversation, whether or not you’re looking for investment yet. And if you’re starting to think about who to raise from, our guide on how to find the right private equity investor is a good place to start.