AI Training Startup Plato Raises $16 Million in Series A Funding

Plato raised $16 million in a Series A led by Nava Ventures, bringing the San Francisco company’s total funding to $19 million as it develops simulated workplaces for AI training and evaluation.

Plato announced the round Oct. 28. Gradient Ventures, which led Plato’s seed round, also invested, alongside Transpose Platform and Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, who invested personally. Nava Ventures founder Freddie Martignetti will join Plato’s board.

Founded in 2025, Plato creates reusable work simulations for customer support, HR operations, finance, accounting and medical administration. The environments can be reset and reused, giving AI labs simulated settings for tasks across those fields. Labs can use them to train models through reinforcement learning and evaluate performance. The simulations are designed to help avoid real-world consequences from training models in live business systems.