Women’s Health Founders React to Gates Foundation $2.5 Billion Pledge

Earlier this week, the Gates Foundation pledged its biggest investment yet in women’s health, $2.5 billion over five years, to fuel everything from low-cost tools that curb childbirth bleeding to AI-enabled ultrasounds and first-in-class drugs for preeclampsia.

About 70 percent of the promised $2.5 billion is reserved for R&D, with the balance aimed at getting new products to market. With U.S. maternal-health grants shrinking, the foundation’s cash instantly becomes one of the largest non-dilutive funding pools for startups tackling unmet needs in contraception, microbiome science and maternal care.

We asked women’s health partners and founders from the Cure ecosystem and beyond what this unprecedented commitment means for research and funding in the women’s health industry.

While they all applauded the long overdue investment in this critical area of global health, many underscored the need for more investment like it from diverse sources, and as well as rigorous processes to ensure appropriate funding allocation. Here’s what they had to say:

Creates Meaningful Opportunities

Monica Cepak, CEO, Wisp

"This $2.5 billion commitment to women’s health is a monumental step forward. At Wisp, we see firsthand the urgent need for innovation and investment in areas like contraception, maternal healthcare, and reproductive health that have historically been underfunded and overlooked. This funding not only validates the critical work being done by the startups in this space but also creates meaningful opportunities to accelerate solutions that are inclusive, accessible, and patient-centered. We applaud the Foundation’s leadership and look forward to the impact this investment will have on women’s health worldwide."

A Rallying Call

Piraye Yurttas Beim, PhD, Founder and CEO, Celmatix, and Chair, Endometriosis Foundation of America

“The Gates Foundation’s $2.5 billion commitment to women’s health is a historic and welcome step forward. It’s encouraging to see an institution with such scale and influence direct meaningful, non-dilutive capital toward longstanding gaps in maternal health, contraception, and the vaginal microbiome. My own company, Celmatix, has benefited from Gates Foundation support at pivotal moments in our journey, so I know firsthand how catalytic their funding can be.

At the same time, we must be careful not to see this as a solution to the broader crisis of underinvestment in women’s health. The Gates Foundation’s focus on the developing world, while vital, leaves significant unmet needs on the table — particularly in areas like menopause and endometriosis, which affect women globally but fall outside the Foundation’s mission. These are conditions that impact hundreds of millions of women yet remain dramatically underfunded.

This moment should serve as a rallying call — not a hand-off. We need more organizations, especially those not constrained by a global health mandate, to step up and fill the critical gaps in women’s health research and innovation.”

A Move Others can Follow

Anu Sharma, Founder and CEO, Millie

“This investment signals a significant commitment to advancing women’s health research at a time when it’s most needed. It’s a move that I hope others will follow — it is essential that we all continue the fight to drastically improve women’s health. I am especially excited that there is a larger focus on maternal health and obstetric care to make pregnancy safer, as maternal mortality rates worsen across the U.S. America has a long way to go to close the gap in women’s healthcare.”

Key is Identifying Critical Gaps

Theresa Neil, CEO, Femovate

"$2.5 billion for women's health R&D, the largest commitment ever! The key is identifying where critical gaps in care exist, understanding who's already innovating in this space and how these products and services can be combined across the continuum of care. That's why our current work mapping the entire women's health ecosystem at Femovate is well-timed. Strategic resource allocation means identifying research gaps, innovation gaps, and service design gaps, and then backing the companies already working to fill those gaps, instead of starting from scratch."

Crucial First Step

Shlomi Madar, PhD, CEO, SpotitEarly

“For years, women’s health has been overlooked, underfunded, and underserved. At SpotitEarly, we believe that innovative early-detection solutions, especially for breast cancer, can significantly change the trajectory of a patient’s life. But innovation doesn’t happen overnight; it requires meaningful support, which has often been hard to come by for women’s health companies. The Gates Foundation’s investment is a crucial first step in ensuring that those working to transform women’s health have the resources they need to drive real progress.”

Fuel for a Movement

Jessica Bell van der Wal, CEO of Frame Fertility

"This is a welcome beacon — a huge and long-overdue moment for women’s health. The Gates Foundation’s $2.5B commitment is not just funding — it’s fuel for a movement to fix decades of underinvestment in conditions that impact half the population. But now comes the real work: How will these funds translate into research choices, equitable access, and measurable impact on the ground? Ensuring transparency in who applies, who is selected, and how outcomes are evaluated will be essential. At the end of the day, making bold pledges is only the beginning. What matters most is turning them into healthier lives and lasting results.”

Pita Navarro, Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Evvy

"The Gates Foundation’s $2.5 billion commitment is a transformative moment for the women’s health field. It signals to the world that investing in the health of half the population is not niche, it’s foundational to global well-being and economic growth. For those of us building science-backed solutions in areas like vaginal health and fertility, this kind of catalytic funding opens the door to breakthroughs that have long been held back by systemic underinvestment. In an era of shrinking public support, this pledge stands out as a powerful catalyst fueling the innovation and infrastructure needed to finally prioritize women’s health at scale."

Powerful Demonstration of Leadership

Peter Pacult, Co-Founder and CEO, Avana Health

“We are at a critical inflection point. Awareness of the urgent need for women’s health solutions has never been greater, yet public funding opportunities have been shrinking. The Gates Foundation’s targeted investment is a powerful demonstration of leadership, and I’m confident it will catalyze a growing ecosystem of innovators to deliver solutions that address real and pressing patient needs.”