Plato raises $16M Series A for simulated workplaces where AI agents train

Plato is raising a $16M Series A to build simulated work environments where AI models practice software use and multi-step business tasks before touching live systems. Nava Ventures led the round, joined by Gradient Ventures, Transpose Platform and Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI. The round brings total funding to $19M, following a seed led by Gradient Ventures. The company was founded in 2025 and is based in San Francisco. It plans to expand its library of work environments and the experience it offers AI developers. Nava Ventures founder Freddie Martignetti is joining the board. For builders, training and evaluation environments are becoming a funded category of their own. Teams shipping agents into enterprise workflows need realistic sandboxes to test failure modes, and vendors that supply them are drawing well-known operators as backers.