These 10 women founders just raised big money for their impact startups

Insiya Jafferjee – CEO & Co-Founder at Shellworks

Originally from Sri Lanka, Insiya Jafferjee studied Product Design at Stanford and holds an MA from the Royal College of Art, from which she spun-out Shellworks in 2019 alongside Amir Afshar.

A former Apple and Ford engineer, Jafferjee developed technology that turns bacteria into Vivomer, a biomaterial that looks, feels, and performs like plastic – but fully biodegrades in any environment.

Winner of the 2025 Veuve Clicquot Bold Future Award, Shellworks has reportedly replaced 40 tonnes of plastic and 1.2 million packaging units. Partnerships include with Unilever's Wild and Pamela Anderson's Sonsie Skin.

This week, the startup closed a $15M Series A investment led by Paris-based impact fund Alter Equity, with participation from Nat Friedman (NFDG), JamJar (ex-Innocent Drinks founders), and existing investors Founder Collective, LocalGlobe, and Third Sphere.

Funds will expand Vivomer production into the US and EU, targeting cost parity with glass and aluminium at scale.

Hille van der Kaa – CEO and co-founder at Those Vegan Cowboys

Hille van der Kaa leads Dutch food startup Those Vegan Cowboys, which was co-founded in 2020 by the creators of The Vegetarian Butcher (sold to Unilever). Van der Kaa later joined as CEO and the third founder.

Those Vegan Cowboys uses precision fermentation technology to make cheese without cows, producing dairy with the same rich taste and texture as conventional cheese.

This week, the company closed off a round of fundraising at over €12m, including equity from TomTom founder Pieter Geelen, dairy giant Westland Kaas, and several impact entrepreneurs. It then extended the runway with a series of crowdfunding rounds that bought in over 1,800 new investors.

Van der Kaa has taken an unconventional route into the alt-protein space. Before joining Those Vegan Cowboys, she spent years advising media companies on content and marketing, served as editor-in-chief of the BN De Stem newspaper, and taught media studies at Fontys School of Applied Sciences and Tilburg University.

Marie Rouquette – Co-Founder & COO at baCta

Marie Rouquette discovered biology at École Polytechnique in France, conducted research at the National University of Singapore, and earned her PhD in Pharmaceutics from Université Paris-Saclay before leading clinical projects at Eligo Bioscience.

Driven by a desire for deeper environmental impact, she co-founded baCta in 2024. The company uses AI, robotics, and precision fermentation to engineer microorganisms as programmable molecular factories – producing industrial ingredients like astaxanthin (a €1B+ antioxidant market) without petrochemicals or scarce natural sources.

This week, the startup raises a €7m seed led by LocalGlobe and Daphni, with participation from OVNI Capital and angel investors including founders of Phagos, Genomines, and MistralAI.

The fresh capital will go toward scaling astaxanthin production to commercial level via a partnership with a French industrial manufacturer.

Alessandra Accogli – CEO & founder at Sinergy Flow

A materials scientist with a PhD from Politecnico di Milano and a visiting fellowship at MIT, Alessandra Accogli built the foundation of Sinergy Flow in her doctoral research on battery chemistry. In 2022, she spun-out the company alongside co-founders Gabriele Panzeri (CTO) and Matteo Salerno (COO) to develop novel chemistry for low-cost redox flow batteries.

Based in Milan, Italy, the startup has since managed to produce flow cell batteries reportedly capable of over 8 continuous hours of storage – exactly what renewable grids need to stay stable when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow.

In late February, the startup secured a €7m seed investment ed by CDP Venture Capital SGR (via its EnergyTech and Green Transition funds), with participation from 360 Capital, Tech4Planet, and Exergon (Exergon's first Italian investment).

With Alessandra, Sinergy Flow now looks to ramp up production and sell its first commercial units.

Hermine Bonde Jahren – Co-Founder & CEO at Braive

Swedish entrepreneur Hermine Bonde Jahren co-founded Braive in 2015 with her husband and psychologist Henrik Haaland Jahren, driven by a conviction that quality mental healthcare should be accessible to everyone.

A decade on, Braive says it has treated over 100,000 patients through its CE-certified, AI-powered platform – purportedly cutting admin time by 80% and enabling clinicians to treat up to 4× more patients.

On purpose, Braive says it chose profitability over hypergrowth. In 2025, impact investor The Inner Foundation, a €100M initiative focused on inner health for young adults, co-founded by Northzone's Pär-Jörgen Pärson.

More recently, it secured a 30 SEK (€2.8m) angle investor from Sven Hagströmer, a Swedish business executive, best known as the founder of Avanza Bank and investment company Creades.

Sara Nožková – CEO & Co-Founder at Flox Intelligence

A Columbia University-educated entrepreneur who spun Flox out of AI research at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sara Nožková is building a company that does something no one has done before: speak to wild animals in their own language.

Flox's autonomous Edge devices use adaptive bioacoustics and on-device AI to detect animal intent and redirect wildlife away from critical infrastructure – railways, airports, mines, roads – in real time.

Partners already include WWF, Alstom, the US Dept of Agriculture, and Gerald R. Ford International Airport. Sara was awarded H.M. The King of Sweden's Young Pioneer Award.

Flox recently raised a €2.5m seed led by Tilia Impact Ventures, with participation from Satgana, GENIUS NY (CenterState CEO), J.O.S.S., and existing investors Unconventional Ventures and Almi Invest. The startup will use the fresh capital to its accelerate US and Canada deployments, expanding Flox's HQ in New York.

Lucie Kriegshauser – Co-Founder & CTO at Amatera

A plant molecular biologist with a PhD from the University of Strasbourg and INRAE research experience, Lucie Kriegshauser co-founded Amatera in 2022 alongside CEO Omar Dekkiche, after they met through the Entrepreneur First programme.

Their mission is to outpace climate change by accelerating crop breeding. Amatera's AI-driven, robotic platform screens new plant varieties at the cellular level without any GMO techniques. Starting with coffee and wine grapes, they're expanding to staple crops that feed the world.

The Paris-headquartered startup just secured a €6m seed co-led by Demea Sustainable Investment and Oyster Bay Venture Capital, with participation from existing investors PINC (Paulig's venture arm), Mudcake, and Exceptional Ventures.

Hélène Briand – Co-Founder & CIO at Verley

Hélène Briand is an agronomist specialising in dairy cattle who spent seven years at nutrition group Roullier and ran an insect farm in Asia before returning to Europe. In 2022, she founded foodtech startup Verley in Lyon, France alongside CEO Stéphane Mac Millan.

In late February, Verley secured €32m in Series B funding to fuel its expansion to the US. The round was led by Alven, with new investors Blast and Bpifrance, alongside existing backers Sofinnova, Sparkfood, Captech, and Founders Future.

Together Briand and Millan are looking to build a European champion in sustainable protein. The company makes precision-fermented whey proteins (beta-lactoglobulin) that are molecularly identical to cow's milk, but reportedly require 86% less water, 72% fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and 99% less land.

Caroline Walerud – CEO & Co-Founder at AirForestry

A Cambridge-educated biologist turned serial deep-tech entrepreneur and investor, Caroline Walerud co-founded AirForestry in 2020 and stepped up as CEO in December 2025 after the company hit key product milestones.

Just the other week, Airforestry secured €2.6m convertible note from existing investors as it preps for a Series A round. In 2024, the startup secured a €10.3m seed round led by Northzone with participation from Europe's largest forest owner Sveaskog, Kiko VC, CapitalT, SEB Greentech VC, Cloudbreak VC, and founding investor Walerud Ventures.

Caroline's family investment firm Walerud Ventures has backed big names including Klarna and Paebbl. Now she's all-in on AirForestry, which has built the world's first electric drone-based tree harvesting system.

A 60kg harvester drone grabs, prunes, and saws trees during thinning operations without roads, diesel machinery, or soil damage. Traditional forestry uses 3.5 billion litres of diesel annually; AirForestry claims to cut forestry emissions by 10 megatons per year.

Esmeralda Megally – CEO & Co-Founder at Xsensio

A deep-tech entrepreneur who spun Xsensio out of EPFL's cutting-edge semiconductor research in 2014, Esmeralda Megally has spent over a decade developing what is literally a wearable lab.

Her "Lab-on-Skin" platform continuously monitors biochemical biomarkers in real time – electrolytes, metabolites, hormones – giving clinicians data that has historically only been available through blood tests.

Named by TIME as one of the world's top HealthTech companies in 2025, Switzerland-based Xsensio is set to transform how patients are monitored in hospitals and beyond.

This month, Xsensio secured a $7m seed investment Led by Silicon Valley VC WI Harper, with participation from Privilège Ventures and the European Innovation Council (EIC).

Simultaneously, Xsensio announced a long-term collaboration with Texas Instruments to advance semiconductor miniaturisation and large-scale manufacturability of its biosensing systems. Funds accelerate clinical validation and hospital deployment.