Europe is Quietly Winning the Race to Treat Endometriosis, PCOS and Infertility
The biggest drug and device rounds in women's health are now being raised in Lausanne, Stockholm, Lille and Paris. Europe's regulator, its state-backed funds and one $425 million exit explain why, and the gap with America is widening.
The largest Series A femtech has ever recorded didn't happen in San Francisco or New York. It happened in Lausanne.
ReproNovo, a Swiss clinical-stage company, raised $65 million in May 2025 to push two drugs through Phase 2 trials: nolasiban for adenomyosis and embryo implantation, and leflutrozole for male infertility. Paris-based Jeito Capital led, with AXA IM Alts and Merck's venture arm M Ventures alongside. Money for molecules, raised in Europe, syndicated like biotech.
It wasn't a one-off. Gesynta Pharma in Stockholm raised $31.5 million to test vipoglanstat, a non-hormonal endometriosis drug, and dosed the first patient in its 190-woman Phase 2 trial in March. Lattice Medical in Lille raised $47 million for tissue-engineered breast reconstruction.
May Health in Paris added $12 million for a device that treats PCOS-related infertility. Five of the ten biggest femtech funding hubs in 2025 were European cities: London, Lausanne, Lille, Copenhagen and Madrid, per Dealroom. And in the first quarter of 2026, at least four of the eight femtech rounds Dealroom tracked went to European companies.
Endometriosis. Adenomyosis. PCOS. Infertility. The biggest unsolved problems in female health, and the capital to actually treat them is concentrating on one side of the Atlantic.
America's money is doing something different. Its two biggest femtech rounds of the year, Midi Health's $100 million and Pomelo Care's $92 million, both fund telehealth. Real businesses solving a real access problem, but they deliver care that already exists. In the last issue I wrote that everyone's tracking menopause and nobody's treating it. Midi's raise, the largest menopause round on record, is that pattern at Series D scale: it funds visits, not treatment. The treatments themselves are being financed in Europe.
Three things explain why Europe is pulling ahead.
The regulator is moving. On July 2 the European Medicines Agency announced a women's health package: a systematic review of how well women are represented in clinical trials, sex differences built into how medicines get evaluated, and dedicated work on treatment during pregnancy and breastfeeding, with a workshop on September 28 and 29. The FDA has no equivalent program right now. For a clinical-stage company deciding where to run trials and build its regulatory case, that's a loud signal.
The capital is built for it. Europe's femtech money runs through institutions designed to fund science, not apps. Bpifrance, the French state investment bank, led Lattice Medical's round and sits among the ten most active femtech investors in the world. So does EIT Health, the EU's health innovation body in Munich. Jeito exists specifically to take European biopharma through late-stage trials. When the default investors are pharma-literate, drug companies get funded.
And the exit already happened. Bayer paid $425 million in 2020 for KaNDy Therapeutics, a British company developing a menopause drug. That deal is the proof that a Phase 2 women's health asset in Europe can return a fund, and it's what makes today's bets underwritable. American specialist money has noticed: Amboy Street Ventures and Foreground Capital, two US funds built entirely around women's health, both took positions in Gesynta's Stockholm round.
The stakes are bigger than they look, because the pool is small. Femtech raised $724 million globally in 2025, and 2026 is tracking 21 percent below that. The sector now takes 0.7 percent of all health venture capital, down from 2.0 percent a decade ago. When capital is that scarce, whoever allocates it best sets the direction for everyone.
Right now that's Europe, and it's choosing treatment.
America still writes most of the checks, $361 million over the past year against the UK's $75 million.
But size isn't the same as leadership.