Women’s health sometimes is still discussed as an emerging category. But a new report from the biotech company AOA Dx shows exactly how mature this category is—and how much room there still is for growth.
Between 2000 and 2024, there were 272 publicly announced exits of women’s health companies—totaling $91.5 billion in disclosed exit value. That’s by a broader definition of women’s health than is sometimes used to categorize startups; not just reproductive health, but also hormonal health, oncology, autoimmune disease, and more. A limited definition of what qualifies as “women’s health” has influenced how investors and other decision-makers view the category; this report aims to make clear how expansive the potential is.
“Legacy misclassification—particularly in oncology, diagnostics, and chronic disease—caused many women’s health exits to be tracked outside the category, understating its historical scale and creating pricing inefficiencies for investors,” the report says.
About half of all those exits took place during a rapid period of acceleration over the past five years, for a total value of $48.2 billion. Twenty-three transactions exceeded $1 billion. In 2024 alone, women’s health exits reached $21.4 billion in value—a milestone year for the category.
