On September 1, 2026, Berlin-based venture firm Auxxo announced the final close of its Female Catalyst Fund II at €33.3 million — roughly 75% larger than the €19 million debut vehicle it raised in 2021, and the product of a fundraise that co-founder Dr. Gesa Miczaika began in 2022 and describes as taking three years. "It was one of the most difficult things I've ever done in my career," she told Tech Funding News. Auxxo backs European startups with at least one female founder holding at least 20% equity, writing pre-seed and seed checks.

Why It Matters

Sexual wellness and femtech founders are disproportionately women, and they raise disproportionately from funds with an explicit gender mandate — which makes the health of that specific fund category a leading indicator for the sector's capital supply, largely independent of what generalist VC is doing. Afterglow tracked the demand side of this in August: SVB data showing women's health venture funding falling from $3.2 billion in 2024 to roughly $2 billion in 2025, with seed-stage bars now demanding what Series A once did, and founders repositioning away from "women's health" framing entirely. Against that, two European closes inside three days — Auxxo's €33.3 million on September 1, and Capital F's $17 million debut fund in late August — suggest the mandate-fund layer is holding even as the broader women's health allocation contracts. Both funds share a structural feature worth noting: an LP base built substantially from women, in Auxxo's case more than half, in Capital F's roughly 80–85%. When institutional generalists retreat, these vehicles are being recapitalized by a different pool. That is a durability signal, though it also caps size — €33.3 million writes pre-seed and seed checks, not the growth rounds that femtech's scaling problem actually requires. The three-year fundraise is the number to keep. A 75% step-up is a good outcome; taking three years to get it, against a backdrop where the EIF was already anchoring, is a measure of how thin the private LP appetite remains. And the founder-matching platform is a quiet admission of the real bottleneck — Auxxo is not short of capital to deploy at this size, it is short of gender-diverse founding teams with complete skill sets to deploy into. Fixing supply upstream is a slower play than writing checks, and probably the more consequential one.

The LP base is the substantive part. The European Investment Fund remains the anchor, with EIF chief executive Marjut Falkstedt saying the institution is "glad to be continuing the drive for greater gender diversity in European venture capital alongside Auxxo." New to Fund II is EnBW New Ventures, the venture arm of the German utility EnBW — corporate money entering a diversity-mandate fund, which is not a common shape. Investment manager Anke Gratz framed it as strategic rather than charitable: "Given the existing funding gap for female founders, we feel a responsibility and a strategic opportunity to actively broaden the diversity of our portfolio." Aurum Impact, Cherry Ventures and Speedinvest joined alongside family offices and angels. More than half the LPs are women.

Fund II has made eleven investments to date, with Startbase listing Emidat, Resolutiion, Stanhope.ai, Marble Imaging, Delta Labs and Radiogenesis among the portfolio; two companies have already raised follow-on rounds from other VCs. Auxxo paired the close with a second initiative: a pan-European founder matching platform aimed at solo founders missing technical or operational depth, experienced operators with entrepreneurial ambitions, and teams hunting pre-seed capital — built off Auxxo's existing network including Evangelistas and EncourageVentures. "We want to ensure that more women start startups — not someday, but now," Miczaika said.

The backdrop figure everyone cites: all-female founding teams still receive roughly 2% of global venture funding. Co-founder and general partner Bettine Schmitz put the LP composition in that frame: "Our network is growing not only in size but also in influence and impact. The fact that more than half of our LPs are women shows that the industry is changing." Miczaika also acknowledged a repositioning over the fund's life — Auxxo initially pitched on returns and later leaned harder into impact as public sentiment on diversity shifted. "We do want excellent returns; that's the foundation. But ultimately, we want to do it because we believe it's beneficial for the whole world."

Sources

Update — 2026-09-04

{Initial entry — story first created.}