The way companies hire and manage frontline workers has always been a bit of a mess. Spreadsheets, phone calls, disorganized onboarding processes, and then surprise when turnover hits. It’s a problem that’s been kicking around for decades, and honestly, not much has moved the needle until now.
Sergi Bastardas saw this up close during his decade at Amazon and later at floriculture startup Colvin. No matter where he went, the same frustration kept surfacing: there simply wasn’t enough efficient human infrastructure to manage the workers behind the scenes. The people keeping healthcare, retail, logistics, and hospitality running were being handled with tools that felt like they belonged in a different era.
So in 2025, Bastardas teamed up with co-founders Nacho Travesí and Antonio Melé to do something about it. They launched Orbio, an enterprise Technology startup that’s building AI agents to handle the entire lifecycle of frontline workers. And on Monday, the company announced a $21 million Series A led by Dawn Capital.
The idea is pretty straightforward: let AI agents do the heavy lifting that usually falls on HR teams, recruiters, and managers. Orbio’s agents named Maria, Daniel, and Claire can interview candidates, assess fit, monitor employee output, and conduct daily check-ins throughout an employee’s tenure. The goal isn’t to replace humans entirely, but to handle the repetitive, time-consuming tasks that often fall through the cracks.
The startup already has some notable customers signed up. Poke and YUM! Brands, which owns Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC, are using Orbio to onboard and manage frontline employees. Bastardas says customers are moving from pilots to full deployments. At The Stepping Stones Group, a behavioral health provider, Orbio now runs the company’s full US operation, with 20% more candidates making it through to get hired.
Here’s what makes this interesting: each agent generates data that feeds back into the others. Onboarding signals inform recruiting quality. Exit interviews reveal why employees leave, which recalibrates hiring criteria. Engagement data identifies retention risks. It’s a self-improving system, which is exactly what you’d want when you’re trying to automate something as messy as workforce management.
Orbio isn’t alone in this space. It competes with startups like Paradox, which automates recruiting, and WorkJam, which focuses on frontline employee management. But Bastardas sees the real competitor as the legacy approach itself: fragmented processes that still rely on spreadsheets and phone calls in industries like healthcare, retail, and logistics. That’s a massive market to go after, and it’s one that’s ripe for disruption.
The company has raised $26 million total so far, with investors including Visionaries and 2100 Ventures. The fresh capital will go toward hiring and developing more AI agents, which makes sense given the ambition here. Bastardas put it this way: “This will be a transformation for businesses, but also the workforce. The 2.7 billion people who keep healthcare, retail, logistics, and hospitality running, most of whom don’t have a corporate email address, have previously got nothing. This is their AI moment.”
That’s a bold claim, and it’s worth taking a beat on it. The promise of AI for deskless workers has been talked about for years, but the reality has often fallen short. What Orbio is attempting isn’t just technical, it’s deeply operational. Getting this right means understanding the nuances of industries where turnover is high, regulations are complex, and the human element matters more than anyone wants to admit.
The real test will be whether the data feedback loops actually work at scale, and whether businesses are ready to trust AI agents with decisions that used to require a human touch. We’re entering a phase where the technology is no longer the bottleneck. The harder question is whether organizations are willing to change how they’ve always done things.
This story was originally reported by Dominic-Madori Davis at TechCrunch.
