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To celebrate the success of women in science and engineering, and to help to encourage more young individuals to join them, 3D printing experts at Hubs.com have uncovered some of the industry’s most influential female founders.
Using data from Crunchbase, the study shines a light on the incredible female founders who’ve raised more than US$ 1 billion in investments.
“All around the world, women in the engineering industry are inspiring more young females with an interest in maths or science to start a career in STEM,” Filemon Schoffer, cofounder & CCO from Hubs.com said.
“While a number of STEM jobs available are on the rise, it’s evident that women are still underrepresented in these fields at every level, from junior roles to upper management, and we want that to change.
“By celebrating these incredible women who are leading the way for future generations, we hope we can encourage more young people to join them.”
Annie Tao – Horizon Robotics, San Francisco, California
With an incredible $2.2 billion of funding received overall, co-founder of Horizon Robotics, Annie Tao, is leading the way as one of the world’s most influential women in STEM.
Prior to Horizon Robotics, she worked in the Google Sales group at Silicon Valley and Baidu, where she led a number of global projects including product search operations optimization and key payment product operations at launches. She launched Horizon Robotics in 2016 with three other co-founders. Since then, the company has raised a staggering $2.2Billion over 11 funding rounds, with FAW Group and Victor Koch being two of the most recent investors.
Michelle Cargill – Invitae, San Francisco, California
Michelle Cargill, Co-founder of Invitae, is another female founder on our list who’s paving the way for women in science.
Founded in 2010, Invitae is a genetic information company whose mission is to bring genetic information into routine medical practice to improve the quality of healthcare for billions of people.
Invitae has raised a total of US$2 billion in funding over eight rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Apr 5, 2021, from a Post-IPO Debt round.
Andra Ciorici – UiPath, Bucharest, Romania
UiPath was co-founded by Andra Ciorci in 2005, aiming to design and develop robotic process automation software. The company was founded in Romania, under the name DeskOver, and renamed UiPath in 2015, with clients such as the CIA, the US Navy, McDonald’s Corp, Duracell and Swiss Re.
Rounding up a phenomenal $ 2 billion in investments, UiPath is funded by 32 investors, with giants such as Alkeon Capital and Tiger Global Management amongst the most recent.
Sandra Horning – EQRx, Portola, California
In a bid to help tackle the rising cost of medicines, business partners Sandra Horning and Peter Bach developed the biotechnology company EQRx, focusing on re-engineering the process from drug discovery to patient delivery.
EQRx has raised a total of $1.9B in funding over three rounds. Its latest funding was raised on Dec 17, 2021, from a Post-IPO Equity round, and has a total of 21 investors.
Martine Clozel, Idorsia, Allschwil, Switzerland
In 1997, Martine Clozel and her husband Jean-Paul cofounded the pharmaceutical company, Actelion, before it was acquired by Johnson & Johnson in 2017.
Following the acquisition, the couple cofounded Idorsia as a spin-off, a pharmaceutical company that discovers, develops, and commercializes innovative medicines based on small molecules for a range of conditions, including rare and orphan diseases.
Martine is the Executive Vice President, and Chief Scientific Officer at the company, where she helped raise $600M to support an insomnia drug launch.
The company has raised a phenomenal US$1.4 billion in funding, since launching in 2017.
Samantha Du – Zai Lab, Shanghai, China
Dr Samantha Du is a well-recognised leader in the R&D arena in China through her advisory roles to various government bodies. She started her research career at Pfizer’s global R&D site in Connecticut, the US, and led teams that delivered multiple INDs and NDAs for various anti-infective, cardiovascular, and metabolic medicines. In 2014, she launched Zai Lab, an innovative biopharmaceutical company based in Shanghai focused on bringing transformative medicines for cancer, autoimmune and infectious diseases to patients in China and around the world. To date, the company has seen incredible growth, raising a total of $1.7Billion in funding over eight rounds.
J. Jean Cui – Turning Point Therapeutics, San Diego, California
J. Jean Cui is a renowned oncology drug designer with more than 20 years of experience in drug discovery and project management at Big Pharma and biotech companies.
Associated with two companies, J. Jean Cui is the scientific founder and board member of Turning Point Therapeutics, and the Co-Founder, President, and CEO of BlossomHill Therapeutics where she specializes in new drug discovery. More specifically, Turning Point Therapeutics develops precision medicines for cancer and other diseases.
In 2020, Turning Point Therapeutics raised an incredible US$1.2 billion in investments. Funded by 11 investors overall, Lilly Asia Ventures and HBM Healthcare Investments AG are the most recent.
Alice Schwartz – Bio-Rad Laboratories, Hercules, California
Founded in 1952, Bio-Rad Laboratories is the brainchild of husband and wife, Alice and David Schwartz.
Now at age 92, Alice Schwartz is America’s oldest self-made female billionaire, with an estimated net worth of $1.3Billion.
Bio-Rad Laboratories has played a leading role in the advancement of scientific discovery for over 50 years by providing a broad range of innovative tools and services to the life science research and clinical diagnostics markets.
It’s been reported that the couple started the company with just $750, however, over half a century later, in March 2022, they secured a staggering $1.2 billion investment.
Yan Xia – Momenta.ai, Suzhou, Jiangsu, China
Yan Xia is co-founder and head of R&D at Momenta.ai, which aims to build the “brains” for autonomous vehicles, using deep-learning-based software, HD semantic mapping, and data-driven path planning. Prior to Momenta.ai Yan Xia developed technologies at Microsoft Research which were used in products such as Bing.
Since Yan founded Momenta.ai in 2016, the company has raised a total of $1.2Billion in funding over 12 rounds. Overall, Momenta is funded by 23 investors, including SAIC Motor and IDG Capital.
Anne Wojcicki – 23andMe, San Francisco, California
Anne Wojcicki co-founded 23andMe in 2006 after a decade spent in healthcare investing, focused primarily on biotechnology companies.
Her hope was to empower consumers with access to their own genetic information and to create a way to generate more personalized information to help commercial and academic researchers to develop new drugs and diagnostics. In light of this, 23andMe has built one of the world’s largest databases of individual genetic information.
The company has raised a total of $1.1B in funding over 19 rounds. With 39 investors in total, huge names including Richard Branson have recently invested in the company.
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