San Francisco – October 29, 2026 -- Plato, a startup that builds simulated workplaces for training AI models, raised a $16 million Series A round led by Nava Ventures, lifting its total funding to $19 million.
Gradient Ventures, Transpose Platform and Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman also participated. Gradient Ventures had led the company's earlier seed round. Nava Ventures founder Freddie Martignetti joins Plato's board.
Simulations let AI labs train models without touching live systems
Plato targets the shift from AI that answers questions to AI that takes action. Training models directly in live software carries real risk: a model learning to place an order could spend actual money, and one practicing an administrative task could alter real records. Plato recreates these workflows in simulations that can be reset and reused.
AI labs use the environments for reinforcement learning, in which models attempt tasks and receive feedback. Plato works with domain experts to model jobs in customer support, people operations, finance, accounting and healthcare administration. The company is developing richer simulations with longer work sequences and interactions with simulated people.
Evaluations score the process, not only the result
Plato assesses both the outcome and how a model reaches it. A completed purchase does not count as a success if the model exceeds the budget. The evaluations also check whether models exploit weaknesses in a simulation to earn a high score.
CTO and co-founder Pranav Putta said the aim is to let developers distinguish a high score from work done correctly, by checking whether a model followed instructions and respected constraints.
Founders bring computer-use training experience from Yutori and MultiOn
CEO Robert Farlow built an annotation platform at Yutori to support training of computer-use models. Putta worked on training computer-use models at MultiOn, and his research background spans computer vision, robotics and reinforcement learning. Plato was founded in 2025.
Martignetti described Plato as "really a data lab" working at the frontier of model development, and said its work is critical to unlocking AI at the enterprise level.
Plato will use the funding to expand its library of real-world work experience. It will pay professionals to recreate their jobs in simulated environments and deploy AI agents on real tasks to collect additional experience.