via TechCrunch
Orbio Raises $21 Million to Automate Hiring and Onboarding for Frontline Workers
After spending a decade at Amazon and later at the floriculture startup Colvin, Sergi Bastardas noticed a persistent gap: the lack of efficient “human infrastructure” to support the workers behind the scenes. In 2025, together with co-founders Nacho Travesí and Antonio Melé, he launched Orbio, an enterprise startup that uses AI agents to help businesses manage frontline workers.
On Monday, Orbio announced a $21 million Series A funding round led by Dawn Capital. The startup already counts Poke and YUM! Brands (owner of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC) among its customers, using the platform to onboard and manage their frontline employees. Bastardas noted that customers are now moving from pilot programs to full-scale deployment. For example, at behavioral health provider The Stepping Stones Group, Orbio now runs the company’s entire U.S. operations, leading to a 20% increase in the number of candidates who successfully make it through the hiring process.
Orbio’s AI agents—named Maria, Daniel, and Claire—can interview candidates, assess fit, monitor employee performance, and conduct daily check-ins throughout an employee’s lifecycle. The goal is to help businesses run their workforces autonomously, Bastardas explained, enabling companies to engage and support their frontline workers while delegating some operational tasks to AI agents.
“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,” Bastardas said.
Orbio competes with several startups such as Paradox, which automates recruiting, and WorkJam, which helps manage frontline employees. However, Bastardas sees Orbio’s biggest competitor as the legacy approach to managing frontline workers—especially in industries like healthcare, retail, and logistics—which often relies on fragmented processes, spreadsheets, and phone calls. This is rapidly changing in the age of AI. Orbio has raised a total of $26 million to date from investors including Visionaries and 2100 Ventures. Bastardas said the fresh capital will be used to hire more talent and develop additional AI agents.
“This will be a transformation for businesses, but also for the workforce,” Bastardas said. “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 gotten nothing. This is their AI moment.”