It’s not easy to raise capital as a founder. Sixty-four percent of female founders still describe their gender as having held them back or as an obstacle, according to a new report from the pre-seed fund January Ventures. And yet, for the first time since this report began in 2019, men and women founders are equally as optimistic about fundraising. A longtime “gender pessimism” gap has closed.
In such a difficult environment, you might think this gap closed because men are more pessimistic. But actually, women have become more optimistic about fundraising. That’s among a cohort of 482 founders that is on the earlier side of their fundraising journey; 32% hadn’t started raising capital yet, 52% had raised a pre-seed round, 14% were seed-stage, and only 1% had reached series A. Overall, 72% of founders are feeling optimistic—a huge rebound from a low of 22% in 2022.
So what’s behind this rosy outlook? It’s not women getting a greater share of capital—those stats are still stagnant. Deal count for female-founded companies fell for the fourth straight year in 2025. All-female founding teams posted steeper drops in both deal value and count than mixed-gender cohorts. And AI mega-rounds for elite founders like Thinking Machines Lab’s Mira Murati and Anthropic’s Daniela Amodei skewed the data, making it look like a better environment for female founders than it actually is.
But female founders might be feeling more optimistic because they don’t need capital as badly as before—thanks to AI. That’s a theory posed by January Ventures general partner Maren Bannon.
“There is a perception that AI can level the playing field, which could increase the optimism of female founders,” she theorizes. In January Ventures’ first survey in 2019, the firm found that for every $1.00 that a male founder raised, a female founder raised 38 cents. That gap hasn’t closed—but it’s not the be-all end-all it once was. With AI, early-stage founders can now do more with less, and are less worried about not being able to raise enough capital.
Meanwhile, other trends beyond dollars raised could work in female founders’ favor. Investors are moving beyond backing people they know—from 54% in 2023 to 38% in 2025. Female founders might be observing this shift and feel better about their odds.
And, for the first time, female founders are reporting feeling just slightly more supported by their communities than their male peers, at 82% compared to 80%.
Are you a female founder? If so, tell me: are you feeling optimistic and why?
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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