The AI boom isn’t just reshaping tech. It’s distorting the already fragile ecosystem for women founders. Two-thirds of every U.S. venture dollar going to female-founded startups last year flowed into AI, Pitchbook’s latest US All In: Female Founders in the VC Ecosystem report found. And nearly half of that AI money went to just two companies: Anthropic and Scale AI. Meanwhile, ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati raised a record-breaking $2 billion seed round for her AI startup, Thinking Machines Lab, in July 2025, the largest seed funding in history, valuing the pre-product company at $12 billion.
Startups with at least one female founder raised a record $73.6 billion in 2025, according to a new PitchBook report, nearly doubling the $44.7 billion they raised just two years earlier. But the apparent victory masks a more complicated reality that has been building for years.
