After Sergi Bastardas’ decade at Amazon and floriculture startup Colvin, one thing always stood out: the feeling that there was not enough efficient “human infrastructure” to manage workers behind the scenes. He took this feeling and, in 2025, together with his co-founders Nacho Travesí and Antonio Melé, launched Orbioan enterprise startup that helps companies manage frontline workers, using artificial intelligence agents, of course.
On Monday, the company announced a $21 million Series A round led by Dawn Capital. The startup says its clients already include Poke and YUM! Brands (owners of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC), to onboard and manage their frontline employees. Bastardas said customers are moving from using Orbio on a pilot basis to now fully implementing the software. As an example, he said that at behavioral health provider The Stepping Stones Group, Orbio now runs the company’s entire U.S. operations, with 20% more candidates getting hired.
Orbio agents (Maria, Daniel and Claire) can interview candidates, assess their suitability, monitor employee performance and conduct daily check-ins throughout an employee’s employment life cycle. The goal is to help companies manage their workforce autonomously, Bastardas said, adding that companies will be able to engage and support the frontline workforce while also delegating some workforce operations to AI agents.
“Each agent generates data that feeds back to the others: onboarding signals inform recruiting quality; exit interviews reveal why employees leave, recalibrating hiring criteria; engagement data identifies retention risks,” he continued.
Orbio competes with several startups, such as Paradox, which helps automate recruiting, and WorkJam, which helps manage frontline employees.
However, Bastardas sees Orbio’s biggest competitor as the legacy approach to how frontline workers are managed (especially in industries like healthcare, retail and logistics), a fragmented process that sometimes still involves spreadsheets and phone calls. However, all this is changing rapidly in the age of AI. Orbio has raised $26 million in funding to date from investors including Visionaries and 2100 Ventures. Bastardas said the fresh capital will be used to hire and develop more AI agents.
“This will be a transformation for companies, 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 never had anything before. This is their AI moment.”
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