Welcome to Her Hustle Wrapped 2025! It has been an incredible year for female founders, and we wanted to close out the year by looking back at the ladies who raised, built, and scaled in 2025!
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We tracked 410 venture fundraising rounds by startups with at least one female founder in 2025. FOUR HUNDRED AND TEN! These incredible women raised a cumulative $26B+. The ladies are building and we are here for it. Here’s to even more in 2026!
Note that while this is relatively robust coverage, there are definitely rounds we may have missed. We do try our best to track them all.
As a capstone for the year, we wanted to bring you Her Hustle Wrapped and superlatives for the founders who crushed it in 2025!
Biggest Rounds (The Billionaire Builders):
Daniela Amodei (Anthropic): $13B led by ICONIQ
Mira Murati (Thinking Machine Labs): $2B led by a16z
Luana Lopes Lara (Kalshi): $1B led by Paradigm
By Industry:
SaaS (127)
Health & Biotech (94)
Fintech (45)
Climate & Energy (39)
PropTech (21)
Most Represented Investors:
General Catalyst
a16z
Accel
Most Common Founder First Name:
Michelle (8)
Rebecca (6)
Anna (6)
👯 Founding Sisterhood (Founding teams of 3+ queens): Perelel, OneSkin, Edera, Millie, BoobyBiome, Sensori
🩺 Queen of Care (Biggest Health & Biotech Round): Pranitha Patil (Function Health): $298M Series B
💳 Capital Queen (Biggest Fintech Round): Luana Lopes Lara (Kalshi): $1B
🌱 Green Empress (Biggest Climate Round): Shannon Miller (Mainspring): $258M Series F
Lastly, thank you to all of our incredible readers! 21% of you are in California, with 17% in Massachusetts and 17% in New York respectively. We also have readers in 47 states (please share with any friends in Alaska, ND, or Wyoming) and 91 countries. Thank you, Hustlers!! Wishing you a happy new year!
J. Jean Cui, Co-Founder, President & CEO of BlossomHill Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biopharma developing first-in-class macrocyclic cancer medicines, raised $84M in a Series B extension led by Janus Henderson Investors, Brahma Capital, and BioTrack Capital.
Ramses Alcaide, CEO of Neurable, a noninvasive brain-computer interface company embedding real-time cognitive insights into everyday devices, raised $35M in Series A funding led by Spectrum Moonshot Fund.
Riya Grover, Co-Founder & CEO of Sequence, an AI-powered quote-to-cash and billing platform automating custom B2B contracts and pricing models, raised $20M in Series A funding led by 645 Ventures.
Tamar Gomez and Wiem Gharbi, Co-Founders of Ankar AI, a London-based AI platform streamlining patent filing and intellectual property management, raised $20M in Series A funding led by Atomico.
Eden Ovadia and Victoria Toli, Co-Founders of Finny, an AI-powered prospecting platform helping financial advisors drive organic client growth, raised $17M in Series A funding co-led by Venrock.
Molly Sims, Founder of YSE Beauty, a skincare brand designed for women 35+ addressing hyperpigmentation and aging concerns, raised $15M in Series A funding led by Silas Capital.
Christina LaMontagne, Co-Founder & CEO of Clarity Pediatrics, a virtual pediatric chronic care platform expanding into obesity care, raised $14.5M in Series A funding led by Jackson Square Ventures.
Caroline Merin, Founder & CEO of Leona Health, an AI-powered healthcare communication platform that helps doctors manage and prioritize patient messages via WhatsApp, raised $14M in seed funding led by a16z.
Lina Colucci, Co-Founder & CEO of Lemon Slice, an AI avatar platform generating real-time digital video agents from a single image, raised $10.5M in seed funding from Matrix Partners and YC.
Celeste Amadon, Co-Founder & CEO of Known, a voice-powered dating app that uses AI-driven conversational onboarding to facilitate real-world introductions, raised $9.7M in funding led by Forerunner.
Marissa Mayer, Founder & CEO of Dazzle AI, a consumer AI company building intuitive, user-centered tools that make everyday technology simpler and more accessible, raised $8M in seed funding led by Forerunner.
Inna Plumb, Co-Founder & CEO of Auxira Health, a virtual cardiology company embedding remote clinical teams into cardiology practices, raised $7.8M in seed funding led by Route 66 Ventures and Abundant Venture Partners.
Margaret Upshur, Founder & CEO of Mobius Materials, a safe spot marketplace bringing liquidity, quality control, and price transparency to the secondary semiconductor market, raised $3M in seed funding led by Spero Ventures.
Jaya Gupta from Foundation Capital shared that the trillion-dollar opportunity isn't better systems of record, it's context graphs. Platforms like Salesforce store what happened but miss the "why": exceptions, approvals, and reasoning that live in Slack threads and people's heads. Startups in the agent orchestration layer can capture these decision traces in real-time, turning precedent into queryable data. Read the full article here.
There are 20+ startup accelerators founders can apply to right now, including a16z Speedrun ($750k–$1M for ~7–10%), Y Combinator ($500k for ~7%), Techstars ($220k for ~5–7%), NEO ($600k via uncapped SAFE with a $10M floor), South Park Commons ($400k for 7% plus a $600k guaranteed follow-on), and more.
a16z shared its State of Consumer AI 2025, finding that consumer AI is increasingly winner-take-most, with ChatGPT dominating usage and retention, Gemini rapidly accelerating on growth and paid users, and the biggest breakout opportunities shifting to focused, opinionated consumer apps rather than general-purpose assistants.
New York’s startup ecosystem had a booming 2025, with $23.5B raised across 1,087 deals, accelerating Series A activity, surging AI and enterprise startups, and a rapidly growing talent base.
Ready Together launched on the App Store, introducing a relationship-focused app designed to help couples build trust, communication, and emotional attunement through daily check-ins, shared reflections, and intentional relational practices.
Pebble unveiled a $75 AI-powered smart ring that lets users capture quick voice notes with a press-and-hold button, positioning it as a privacy-first “external memory” device with no subscription and years-long battery life.
The FDA approved Addyi, known as the “little pink pill,” for postmenopausal women, making it the first medication approved for low sexual desire in both pre- and postmenopausal women under 65 and expanding treatment options in women’s sexual health despite modest benefits and notable side effects.
⚙️ Katie from Khosla Ventures is hiring a winter / spring SWE Intern to help build internal automation tools with the investing team in Menlo Park.
✍️ Sophia from Trust Fund is hiring a Newsletter Writer to support her weekly Substack, helping turn ideas on startups, business, and entrepreneurship into sharp, engaging long-form writing (UK or NYC).
✨ Sophie from Fazit is hiring a paid NYC-based Intern to support content creation, street marketing, and social media activation for the viral glitter freckles beauty brand ($20/hour).
🚀 Selin from Delve is hiring scrappy growth talent to help scale its AI-native compliance platform, building a high-output B2B growth engine run like an engineering team across multiple channels.
🍽️ Jake from 3rd Space is hiring a NYC-based Intern to support newsletter research and writing, help produce curated dinner events, and build relationships across the startup, media, and culture ecosystem.
🎨 Zoey from Flick is hiring a Design Intern to work closely on crafting a first-principles, aesthetics-driven product experience at the YC-backed consumer app.
🏛️ Madeleine from Civic Roundtable is hiring across Growth Marketing, Senior Software Engineering, and Senior Visual Design to help build mission-driven technology focused on more effective government.
💁♀️ Teli Labs matches and introduces young talent to founders at top early-stage startups & SMBs. Apply to join our talent pool!
🚀 Share this newsletter with a friend and start growing your network.
📈 Partner with Teli Labs if you are a early-stage startup interested in hiring top talent.
🗞️ Explore our other newsletters: Teli Digest, a roundup of startup hiring, funding, and ecosystem insights, and Dorm Report, spotlighting standout young founders.
I hope you enjoyed this newsletter, Hustlers!
Love,
Daniela & Adrian