Auxxo, a Berlin-based venture capital firm dedicated to backing startups with at least one female founder, has announced the final close of its Auxxo Female Catalyst Fund II at €33.3 million (approximately $38.7 million), more than 75 percent larger than its €19 million debut fund, according to a report published by EU-Startups on September 1, 2026.
The fund's final close comes roughly a year after its first close of €26 million in July 2025, when the European Investment Fund (EIF) came in as anchor investor. Since then, the roster of backers has grown to include Aurum Impact, EnBW New Ventures, Cherry Ventures and Speedinvest, alongside a number of family offices, business angels and founders from across Europe — notably, more than half of the fund's limited partners are women.
Fund II targets pre-seed and seed-stage, sector-agnostic startups across Europe with at least one female founder holding a minimum of 20 percent of founder shares, with initial investments ranging from roughly €350,000 to €800,000 for a 3 to 8 percent equity stake. The firm says it has already deployed capital from the new fund into 11 companies.
Auxxo was founded in 2019 by Bettine Schmitz and Dr. Gesa Miczaika, who bring more than a decade of combined experience in startup building and investment — Schmitz through her work at the Axel Springer Plug & Play Accelerator helping launch companies including N26 and Studysmarter, and Miczaika through scaling Blacklane into a global company and championing startup diversity as Vice President of the German Startup Association. The firm's first fund, launched in 2021 with €19 million, made 34 investments and recorded one exit, from AI-based learning platform Peer Solutions, according to Crunchbase data.
The fund's growth arrives against a backdrop in which female-founded companies continue to receive a disproportionately small share of European venture capital — just 16.5 percent of deal activity in 2025, according to figures cited by EU-Startups. Auxxo's approach directly targets that funding gap while also, through its newly launched pan-European Founder Matchmaking Platform, attempting to address an earlier-stage bottleneck: helping ambitious women find co-founders and build diverse teams from the ground up, rather than solely writing checks into deal flow that already exists.
"It was one of the most difficult things I've ever done in my career," Dr. Gesa Miczaika told Tech Funding News of the three-year fundraising process for Fund II, which began in 2022. Marjut Falkstedt, Chief Executive of the European Investment Fund, said of the EIF's continued backing: "We are glad to be continuing the drive for greater gender diversity in European venture capital alongside Auxxo. Diversity and financial return can go hand in hand — and we look forward to this new fund making exactly that a reality."
Auxxo's close is part of a broader wave of female-focused venture funds reaching new milestones in 2026, including the Arāya Sie Fund, a joint venture between Arāya Ventures and accelerator Sie Ventures, and the Women Backing Women fund-of-funds managed by Bootstrap4F, which raised £130 million in its first close earlier in the year — together suggesting that gender-lens investing in Europe is moving from a first-fund proof of concept toward a more durable, scaling category of venture capital.
Funding for female founders is also increasingly extending into deep-tech areas such as semiconductors, robotics and quantum computing, according to industry trackers, broadening the sectors in which gender-lens funds like Auxxo are able to deploy capital beyond the consumer and software-heavy categories that have historically dominated female-founder investment.
With Fund II now fully deployed toward a target of 30 portfolio companies, Auxxo's next test — as with any fund of its kind — will be whether its expanded capital base and new matchmaking platform translate into stronger returns and a larger pipeline of scaled, female-led European companies over the coming investment cycle.
