Europe’s drive to expand female leadership in deep technology has progressed with the announcement of the 40 winners from the latest Women TechEU call. The EU-funded programme that aims at the deep tech ecosystem gender imbalance has achieved a new record with a total of 1107 applications from female entrepreneurs across Europe for its fourth and last open call.
Significant Funding and Tailored Support
A non-dilutive grant of 75 000 EUR will be awarded to each selected start-up, thus allowing founders to scale their technologies without the need to give up equity.
In addition to money, the Women TechEU package for the awarded business also includes business development with mentoring, coaching and targeted training, all of which are mainly geared towards speeding up growth and leadership capacity strengthening.
This project is suitable for those women in tech, whose companies are in the deep tech sector at an early stage, and are either led or co-led by top management women. In addition, the founders were asked to retain at least 25% ownership at the time of application. The program is structured in a way to provide women with the means to surmount the socio-structural barriers that stand in their way of gaining access to capital, networks, and high-level technical support, i.e., difficulties that still limit their representation in the deep tech sector.
Dominance of AI, Big Data and Life Sciences
The cleantech innovations of the candidates included a wide variety of scientific and technological branches. Almost half 47.5% are in AI and machine learning, also including big data, which highlight Europe’s move to data-driven innovation in sectors like manufacturing, digital services, and advanced automation.
The next 35% of the prizes are for the biotech, pharma, and agri-tech sectors, which point to the growing significance of the health and sustainability solutions. At the same time, 17.5% are working on innovations in sustainable energy, cleantech, and green technology, industries that are at the core of the EU’s climate and industrial strategy.
Some of the other areas that have been represented by innovations are:
Advanced materials (15 %)
Advanced manufacturing (7.5 %)
Advanced or quantum computing (5 %)
Cybersecurity and data protection (2.5 %)
Electronics and photonics (2.5 %)
IoT, W3C and Semantic Web technologies (2.5 %)
Robotics (2.5 %)
The diversity of the sectors in which women are playing an increasingly important role, thus also in this case, their contribution to the competitiveness of Europe in emerging technologies.
Strong Geographical Spread Across Europe
These winners represent 20 different European countries, with France being the most representative country having the largest number of the selected start-ups, 7. The United Kingdom is in the second position with five, whereas Spain has four places. Germany and Sweden, are both represented by three winners, and two each have Denmark, the Netherlands, and Romania.
The remaining 12 start-ups are from Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Estonia, Greece, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, and Serbia. According to the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency, this wide geographic spread is a clear indication of “the commitment to support women innovators from different ecosystems, especially those from widening countries, and the inclusiveness principle.”
Visibility and Future Plans
Profiles of all 40 winning start-ups have been added to the Women TechEU DataHub, a platform designed to increase visibility, encourage collaboration and strengthen the deep tech community.
The European Commission is already considering a next-gen project, which is scheduled to be launched in early 2026, although the Women TechEU initiative will be phased out in May 2026.
The overwhelming response to the programme’s last call is indicative of the ongoing transition of women into sectors of high innovation, where they can have a major impact, and targeted support is essential for their scaling-up.