In the first half of 2025, European and UK startups collectively raised over €20 billion from venture capital and private equity, primarily in AI, deep tech, healthcare, and climate infrastructure. This funding wave propelled several startups across these sectors to attain unicorn status by mid‑2025.
Yet these headline figures conceal a persistent disparity: all the companies that became unicorns in H1 2025 in Europe and the UK had solely male founding teams. This reflects a broader systemic imbalance; female founders in Europe continue to receive only around 2-3% of total venture capital funding, while male-only teams capture the vast majority of investment.
By contrast, mixed-gender teams receive a modest share, and female-only founding teams represent just a sliver of capital raised despite demonstrating strong performance metrics, such as higher income per euro invested. This funding gap highlights deeply entrenched biases in investment flow and access.
Against that backdrop, here are the companies, none of which were founded by women, that achieved unicorn valuations in the first half of 2025 across Europe and the UK. The disparity is a stark reminder that, while Europe’s innovation ecosystem is on the rise, gender inclusion is still lagging behind.
Founder/s: Khurem Farooq, Jane Hughes, Tapan Maniar
Verdiva Bio focuses on creating improved obesity treatments. The company targets key challenges: developing oral therapies with less frequent dosing, enhancing treatment effectiveness and tolerability, and designing innovative combination therapies for sustainable weight management.
In January, the London-based biotechnology company launched a $411 million Series A financing round. It was co-led by Forbion and General Atlantic, with participation from prominent healthcare investors, including RA Capital Management, OrbiMed, Logos Capital, Lilly Asia Ventures, and LYFE Capital. This funding will advance the clinical development of existing assets and expand the company’s cardiometabolic portfolio.
Swedish company Neko Health offers a full-body scanning system designed for broad and non-invasive health data collection. By leveraging over seventy sensors to collect fifty million data points, the company aims to provide quicker, more convenient, and affordable health assessments. The unique, non-invasive Neko Health Scan costs £299 and maps millions of health data points on the body, both inside and out, in just a few minutes. Immediately following the scan, members receive full results as part of a doctor-led consultation. The whole experience is complete in just under an hour.
Neko Health secured $260 million in Series B funding in January this year. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from General Catalyst, O.G. Venture Partners, Rosello, Lakestar, and Atomico.
Poland’s Diagnostyka is touted to be the largest network of medical laboratories. They offer a wide range of laboratory analyses, including routine and specialist tests, with over 3,000 different test types available. They perform over 150 million analyses annually for 26 million patients, and collaborate with thousands of healthcare providers. Diagnostyka provides services like biological material collection and transport, analysis, and timely delivery of test results.
Earlier this year, the company completed an IPO raising €400 million. The IPO, which was the first on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, involved the sale of shares at a maximum price of PLN 105 each. This offering represented 47.83% of Diagnostyka’s share capital. The successful debut marked one of the most significant private equity exits in the region.
Tines offers a no-code platform that enables enterprises to automate complex workflows, particularly in areas such as security, IT, and DevOps, without requiring code. Its AI-powered system integrates large language models (LLMs) with enterprise data systems, enabling frontline staff to orchestrate tasks and make informed decisions securely. With over one billion actions automated per week, Tines frees engineers from repetitive tasks, boosting productivity and reducing technical debt.
In February, Tines closed a $125 million Series C round led by Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, alongside new backers SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Activant, as well as returning investors Accel, Felicis, CrowdStrike Falcon Fund and Addition. The funding values the company at $1.125 billion, granting it unicorn status. This latest round brings total funding since inception to around $272 million, and is earmarked for AI innovation, product development, security, privacy and global expansion.
Being an Alphabet company focused on drug discovery, Isomorphic Labs uses machine learning to reimagine the entire drug development process. They aim to accelerate the discovery of new medicines by building powerful predictive and generative models leveraging AI and Google Cloud infrastructure.
Yet another London-based company that secured funding to attain unicorn status is Isomorphic Labs. It secured $600 million in its first external funding round. The round was led by Thrive Capital, with participation from GV, and followed by additional capital from Alphabet. The funding will enable the company to enhance its AI drug design engine and advance its drug pipeline toward clinical trials.
UK-based fintech company Tide provides digital banking services specifically tailored for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It offers a business account and a range of administrative tools to help businesses manage their finances efficiently. Tide is known for its focus on simplifying financial admin for SMEs, helping them save time and money.
In May this year, the UK’s leading business financial platform landed a £100 million securitisation debt facility from Fasanara, a London-based investment manager with over $4.5 billion in assets under management. This funding will enable Tide to expand its offering of short-term cash flow management solutions for SME customers across the UK.
Parloa has developed an AI Agent Management Platform (AMP) that enables businesses to create, test, and deploy AI agents capable of engaging in natural, human-like conversations. These agents undergo rigorous simulation testing, data isolation, and content filtering to ensure reliability and safety before deployment. By integrating with backend systems and analysing real-time data, Parloa’s AI agents deliver hyper-personalised support and proactively resolve.
Recently, the Berlin-based startup specialising in Agentic AI customer service secured $120 million in Series C funding, propelling its valuation to $1B. Durable Capital Partners, Altimeter Capital, and General Catalyst led the round, which also included EQT Ventures, RPT Capital, Senovo, and Mosaic Ventures.
Founder/s: Robin Tuluie, Jacomo Corbo, Nicolas Haag
PhysicsX empowers enterprises to rapidly develop, deploy, and scale a new generation of AI tools across the full product lifecycle. By combining fast AI-driven physics inference with numerical simulation, our platform helps accelerate development, reduce risk, and drive the creation of highly optimised products.
Last month, the company scored $135 million in Series B funding to transform how we design and build everything, from fighter jets to semiconductors. This round was led by Atomico, with backing from notable investors such as Temasek, Siemens, and Applied Materials, among others.
The conversational AI development platform Lovable allows users to describe what they want and instantly see production-ready apps take shape, including front-end, back-end, database, and all, without writing a single line of code. This technology, powered by cutting-edge language models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, stands out for its ability to create complex, scalable, and fully functional applications from scratch.
The AI startup Lovable landed a $200 million Series A round at a valuation of $1.8 billion. Accel led it with participation from existing investors including QuantumLight Capital, European Tech Collective, 20VC, byFounders, Creandum, Hummingbird, and Visionaries Club.
From a niche indie film streaming platform to a full-fledged Hollywood player.m, Cakarel launched Mubi after frustration with the lack of online access to international cinema, a problem he experienced while trying to stream Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love in Tokyo. The platform, which now boasts 20 million registered users globally, curates a rotating selection of international and independent films.
Last month, Sequoia Capital led a $100 million investment into Mubi, the London-based indie streaming service. The investment will enable the company to scale further, building out its global distribution network and investing in a robust pipeline of original and acquired films.
Quantum Systems is setting the benchmark for real-time aerial intelligence in both governmental and commercial applications. Additionally, the latest advances in eVTOL technology, AI, edge computing, and autonomy enable customers to make better decisions faster and more accurately. Combat-proven and commercially applicable NATO-aligned forces currently use Quantum Systems’ drones and intelligence systems. More recently, the firm expanded into the UK market with the acquisition of Nordic Unmanned UK, a global provider of high-end drone products and services.
The AI-powered aerial intelligence systems for defence, emergency services, and industry raised €160 million in new funding, led by Balderton Capital, with participation from Hensoldt, Airbus Defense and Space, Bullhound Capital, LP&E AG and existing investors, including HV Capital, Project A, Peter Thiel, DTCP, Omnes Capital, Airbus Ventures, Porsche SE and Notion. The funding will be used to accelerate global expansion, scale production, and advance the company’s autonomous drone systems, software and AI.
Paris-based open-source cryptography company Zama pioneers Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), which allows computations to be performed directly on encrypted data, eliminating the need for decryption. It’s FHEVM enables confidential smart contracts on blockchains, preserving data privacy at every stage while maintaining composability and developer usability with familiar tools like Solidity and Python.
Recently, the company raised $57 million in a Series B round co-led by BlockChange Ventures and Pantera Capital. The team stated that the fundraise increases Zama’s total capital raised to over $150 million and values the firm at over $1 billion, making it the first unicorn involved with FHE.
Founder/s: Ricardo Mendes, Pedro Sinogas, Vitor Cristina
AI defence tech company Tekever provides drone-based Intelligence-as-a-Service, specialising in real-time maritime perception and surveillance. They deliver actionable intelligence for various applications, including maritime safety, environmental protection, and security, using a combination of advanced drone hardware, AI, and machine learning.
In May this year, Tekever closed a £400 million funding round led by London-based Ventura Capital, with continued participation from Baillie Gifford, the NATO Innovation Fund (NIF), Iberis Capital and Crescent Cove. With this round, Tekever’s valuation surpassed the £1 billion mark, making it a unicorn.
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