Ovum, an Australian women’s health company founded by Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks, has raised $4 million in seed funding to address the trillion-dollar women’s health gap. Just one year after securing $1.7 million in a pre-seed round, the company has already tripled its valuation.

The round was led by Admiralty Capital Group with participation from Antler, Giant Leap, Aviron Investments, Foggy Valley Aotearoa, Brisbane Angels, and Think & Grow. LaunchVic also increased its investment through The Alice Anderson Fund.

Ovum is building the first-ever AI infrastructure for women's health, with anonymous consent at the forefront. The highly specialised AI captures symptoms, lifestyle, biometrics, every stage of reproductive health, medications, appointments and medical reports into one longitudinal memory. Surfacing patterns over time, it generates health summaries and appointment-ready questions that help women advocate in clinical settings and close the gender health gap.

Since launching in August 2025, Ovum has grown 30% month-on-month with 20,000+ downloads, 60,000 women’s health data insights captured and 113,000+ AI health conversations from women 15 to 84 years old. The funding will support team growth, and the continued expansion of Ovum’s longitudinal women’s health data set, further advancing its vision of building the leading AI infrastructure for women’s health.

While awareness of women’s health inequity is growing, its broader impact on workforce participation, productivity and GDP remains significantly under-discussed in Australian business and policy conversations. Ovum’s momentum proves how women’s health has been historically underserved.

Ovum has already built traction at an enterprise level signing Medibank - Australia’s largest private health insurance provider - pre-product. Since then, Ovum has landed partnerships with Fernwood Fitness, Sweat, Menopause Friendly Australia, and a pilot with Australian Red Cross Lifeblood, to extend its mission to address the $150 billion in annual productivity lost due to women reducing or leaving work for health purposes.

“The most compelling companies are often built around problems society has learned to tolerate but should never have accepted. The gender health gap is one of those problems. Ovum combines mission, market timing and technical capability with an exceptional founder uniquely positioned to lead this movement, and we believe that creates the foundation for a company of global significance,” said Amanda Andriano, Founding Partner, Admiralty Capital Group.

Dr. Heffernan-Marks founded Ovum after seeing firsthand how broken the healthcare system is for women. While battling chronic migraines in her third year of medical school, she was dismissed and told her pain was just anxiety. That experience led to the creation of Ovum: a women’s health journal that combines technology and clinical research to make women’s health actionable and equitable.

“I’ve sat on both sides of the desk, as a patient and as a doctor, and that’s why this mission matters so much to me,” said Dr. Heffernan-Marks. “For too long, women have had to navigate healthcare systems that were not designed around their lived experiences or backed by sufficient female health data. Ovum exists to help women better understand their bodies, advocate for themselves with confidence, and contribute to research that improves care for future generations.

“This raise allows us to scale that mission responsibly by getting Ovum into the hands of more women and continuing to build a trusted platform grounded in clinical integrity, privacy and consent.”

As one of Ovum’s users reported, “I am constantly impressed by Ovum’s capabilities. I come away from my interactions with Ovum feeling calm, completely heard, understood and also much better equipped to manage myself, my body and my work (life generally!). This has positive effects on my short-term and long-term mental health.”

For Ovum, privacy isn’t a feature, it's the foundation. Everything shared is handled with care, encrypted, and protected to global standards like GDPR and SOC 2 II. 83% of Ovum users have opted in to share anonymised data that will contribute to research that improves understanding, treatment, and care for women everywhere.

Earlier this year, Ovum launched clinical trials with St George Hospital and the Royal Hospital for Women - the first in the country to assess AI as a preventative health tool designed specifically for women. The research focuses on understanding how women currently manage their health, the digital tools they rely on, and how AI may support greater health confidence, self-advocacy and continuity of care.