Mintlify has raised $45 million in a Series B round led by a16z and Salesforce Ventures, valuing the company at $500 million. The startup provides AI-powered tools that help businesses generate and maintain software documentation, including FAQs and user guides. Mintlify currently serves approximately 20,000 companies using its AI system for documentation purposes. The funding underscores growing investor interest in AI technologies for software documentation, a sector increasingly reliant on automation to streamline technical writing and maintenance processes.

Pillar, a financial risk management platform for commodity-driven businesses, has raised $20 million in a seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Crucible Capital, Gallery Ventures and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi participated, bringing total funding to $23 million. Founded in 2023, Pillar automates hedging processes for companies in metals, food and airlines. The platform uses AI to analyse data from contracts, cash flows, inventories and messaging apps to manage exposure across commodities, foreign exchange and freight. It builds and adjusts hedge portfolios automatically based on market conditions and risk tolerance. Pillar's clients include Shibuya Sakura Industries, Sigma Recycling and United Metals Solution Group. The company aims to make institutional-grade risk management tools accessible to small and medium-sized enterprises.

Orbital, a startup building space-based AI data centres, has raised an undisclosed amount in funding led by Andreessen Horowitz's a16z Speedrun. The company plans to launch its first test mission, Orbital-1, in April 2027 to demonstrate proof-of-concept for orbital AI infrastructure. Orbital aims to address AI's energy crisis by deploying satellites in sun-synchronous orbits 1,200 miles above Earth, running entirely on continuous solar power whilst using radiative cooling to dissipate heat. Each satellite will house Nvidia-powered GPU clusters designed for AI inference workloads, with latency comparable to terrestrial fibre connections at 20 to 40 milliseconds. The company is opening Factory-1, a research facility in Los Angeles, to manufacture its compute satellites. Rather than attempting repairs in orbit, Orbital will replace satellites at end-of-life with controlled deorbit and burn-up on reentry.