Issue #17 | Wednesday, July 15, 2026
💸 Approximately $555M in disclosed startup funding went to 17 companies with one or more verified female founder this week.
The largest global raise was 🥇 Skello (Quitterie Mathelin-Moreaux and Emmanuelle Fauchier-Magnan) securing a €200M growth round.
The largest U.S. raise was Databento (Christina Qi) with a $97M Series B.
Our ⚡High Signal Founder is Sarah “Sassie” Duggleby of Venus Aerospace.
6 women-led funds were announced this week, representing approximately $2.29B in venture capital.
The largest fund was 🥇 Paradigm (Alana Palmedo) announcing a $1.2B Fund IV focused on crypto and blockchain investments.
Sabrina Paseman of Omni Ventures is quoted in this week’s 💬 Investor Speak.
This week's 🏆 Athletes on the Cap Table highlights Blue Owl's investment in the Cleveland Cavaliers, Toronto Tempo's expanding ownership group, LOVB San Francisco Signal's athlete-backed investor roster, Alma Mater's athlete equity strategy, and the LTA's partnership with Redrice Ventures.
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The signals in this digest come from a variety of credible sources. If you have a tip, opp, data point, or story you would like to include, please send it to [email protected].
Thank you for being a valued subscriber of WINS LIST.
Amie
Connect with me on LinkedIn | Read my Startup column for Inc.
Amie Sheridan | Editor, WINS LIST
📶 Capital Signal
Funding rounds raised by companies with 1 or more women on the founding team
📈 Founder Raises
Tier 2 — Growth Rounds ($25M–$99M)
Skello (Quitterie Mathelin-Moreaux and Emmanuelle Fauchier-Magnan) secured a €200M growth round to expand workforce management software, led by Bridgepoint.
Databento (Christina Qi) raised $97M Series B to expand financial market data infrastructure, led by NEA.
Venus Aerospace (Sarah "Sassie" Duggleby) raised $90M Series B to accelerate hypersonic propulsion technology, led by Mercury Fund.
Arkenstone Defense (Rachel Olney) raised $35M Seed to build government contracting software, led by J2 Ventures.
Alchemab Therapeutics (Rachael Bashford-Rogers) raised a €29.3M Series A extension to develop naturally occurring antibody therapeutics.
Alta (Stav Levi Neumark) raised $25M Series A to build AI agents for go-to-market teams, led by IN Venture.
Tier 3 — Early Stage (<$25M)
CurifyLabs (Charlotta Topelius) raised €12M Series A to automate pharmaceutical compounding, co-led by Sandwater and HealthCap.
Fuchs & Eule (Lina Adrian) raised $11.4M to improve commercial building energy efficiency, led by GET Fund (Isabelle Canu).
Worldmodeldata (Rhea Loucas) raised $9.3M Seed to build AI training datasets from video game environments, led by Iona Star Capital.
alqem (Hanh Nguyen) raised €8M Pre-Seed to develop AI-powered materials discovery, co-led by UVC Partners and Union Square Ventures.
Whering (Bianca Rangecroft) raised $7M Seed to expand its AI-powered digital wardrobe platform, co-led by eBay Ventures and Google AI Futures Fund.
Naaia (Nathalie Beslay, Olivia Rime) raised €6M Series A to build AI governance and compliance software, led by Ventech (Audrey Soussan).
Aylight (Bahareh Marzban) raised $5.1M Pre-Seed to develop chip-scale multiwavelength laser technology, co-led by Elaia and Swisscom Ventures.
One Raven (Sarah Roudybush) raised $5M Seed to build a privacy-first smart home platform, led by Fifth Wall.
Forge Industries (Chelsea Boyle) raised $3.9M to convert industrial waste into industrial fuel, co-led by Next Phase Capital (Shelly Sun Berkowitz) and 8090 Industries, with support from Twynam and Golden Seeds (Jo Ann Corkran & Loretta McCarthy).
Respiro Diagnostics (Alison Quinn) raised £1M Pre-Seed to develop breath-based cancer diagnostics, co-led by Zinc Venture Capital (Ella Goldner) and SFC Capital.
Immigrify (Diana Melendez) raised $1M Pre-Seed to simplify U.S. immigration with AI, led by M25.
⚡High Signal Founder: Sarah “Sassie” Duggleby | Venus Aerospace
Adjacent to her startup’s $91M Series B, led by Mercury Fund…
Six years ago, Andrew and I set out to solve a problem the rest of aerospace has been running into for decades. Everyone wants to go faster, reach farther, and do more. But the way we move through air and space hasn't kept pace with our ambition.
The rocket engine has barely changed since Apollo. Sixty years, same basic design.
We were convinced you couldn't reach the future on an engine built for the past. To us, the answer wasn't new. It had been theorized for decades, powerful on paper and never flown. The rotating detonation rocket engine.
It wasn’t a better version of the engines we already had, but something fundamentally different. Done right, we believed it could change what was possible across defense, space, and high-speed flight.
That belief became Venus Aerospace.
In May 2025, we conducted the world's first flight test of a high-thrust rotating detonation rocket engine, in one of the fastest and most capital-efficient engine developments in history.
Today, we're thrilled to share that Venus has closed a $91 million Series B.
What began as an idea on a balcony in Japan is now a thriving Texas company taking on one of the hardest problems in aerospace. I'm proud of the technology we've built. I'm prouder of the team that built it, and how they did it: faster and leaner than anyone expected, without ever making the people the cost of the pace.
This round funds our next step: maturing the engine into full propulsion systems. In defense, that can mean up to twice the range of today's systems, at comparable cost. In space, up to four times the payload. One propulsion system, many missions.
One day, that same engine will make high-speed flight practical, what we set out to do from the start.
People say the sky's the limit. We've never believed that.
When the engine stops being the limit, neither is distance.
-Sassie
🏦 VC Signals
Paradigm (Alana Palmedo) raised $1.2B Fund IV focused on crypto and blockchain startups.
B Capital (Karen Page) launched a $500M early-stage AI fund.
Chemistry Ventures (Kristina Shen) is raising $500M Fund II to invest in developer tools, fintech, and infrastructure software.
Omni Ventures (Sabrina Paseman) closed a $33M debut fund focused on pre-seed manufacturing technology startups.
Catalyst Fund (Amolo Ng'weno, Maelis Carraro) announced the second close of its $30M climate technology fund focused on Africa.
Vermilion Cliffs Ventures (Ashley Smith) launched Fund II with $25M to invest in AI infrastructure, cybersecurity, and developer tools.
💬 Investor Speak: Sabrina Paseman | Omni Ventures
Adjacent to Business Insider’s exclusive coverage of her firm’s $33M fund dedicated to manufacturing tech…
When we started developing our Manufacturing Tech thesis, investors told us the market was too niche.
Today, Business Insider covered the launch of our $33M fund dedicated to it.
Manufacturing didn’t suddenly become important. The technology finally caught up to the problem.
AI is making decades-old bottlenecks solvable for the first time. And the race to adopt these technologies will help determine which countries hold economic power for decades to come.
The evidence is already here. Founders are building billion-dollar companies across robotics, engineering software, and industrial AI. Manufacturers are deploying AI and automation against problems that resisted decades of digitization. And some of the world’s largest venture funds are now building theses around the physical world, and coming to us to understand it.
We didn’t start Omni because we were looking for an application for AI. We started it because we had spent our careers inside these problems and realized AI was finally the unlock we had been waiting for.
We’re still at the beginning. If you’re building in this space, we want to hear from you.
🏆 Athletes on the Cap Table
Athlete-backed capital moves that caught our attention this week
This section is contributed by Christie Lenox.
Blue Owl HomeCourt Partners (Jennifer Brouse) acquired a minority stake in the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Toronto Tempo welcomed Kyle Lowry and Ayahna Cornish-Lowry to the ownership group of Canada's first WNBA franchise.
LOVB San Francisco unveiled its new Signal brand alongside one of the largest athlete-backed ownership groups in women's sports, including Leslie Osborne, Sarah Spain, Chelsea Poppens, Lindsey Berg, Alysia Montaño, Arielle Chambers, Meghan O'Leary, Kelsey Robinson Cook, and more than 30 additional women investors.
Alma Matter (Beatriz Gomez Martinez) announced Natasha Oon and Victoria Arlen as athlete equity investors ahead of its next fundraising round for the performance golf footwear company.
The Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) partnered with Redrice Ventures (Alistair Brownlee, Andy Murray) to jointly invest in sports technology startups.
🚨 Signals Behind the ACT-ion:
Four Weeks, 20 Transactions, and a Bigger Role for Women Investors
The four-week pattern is clear: women are moving beyond endorsements and minority visibility into equity, fund leadership and sports-property ownership. Consumer deals are driving transaction volume, while funds and franchise stakes are driving the dollars.
Let The Numbers Speak:
20 athlete-backed transactions tracked
16 of 20, or 80%, included at least one woman investor
11 of 20, or 55%, included a woman athlete investor or owner
8 deals were concentrated in consumer and fan commerce
6 deals involved franchise or league ownership
🎬 Signing Off
Every week, we track from where and to which women-founded companies capital flows. We also track WHY.
This issue highlights three signals we're watching closely:
European founders continue attracting outsized growth capital, accounting for many of this week's largest rounds across AI, enterprise software, climate technology, and healthcare.
Specialist venture funds continue to outperform generalist strategies, with new capital flowing into crypto, AI infrastructure, manufacturing technology, and climate.
Ownership is replacing endorsements in sports, as athletes and operators increasingly build wealth through equity, franchise stakes, and venture investing rather than sponsorships alone.
Thanks for reading.
See you next week.
— WINS LIST
