Managing frontline workers — the 2.7 billion employees in healthcare, retail, logistics, and hospitality who often lack a corporate email address — has long been a fragmented process involving spreadsheets and phone calls. Orbio, founded in 2025 by Sergi Bastardas (a former Amazon and floriculture startup Colvin executive), along with co-founders Nacho Travesí and Antonio Melé, aims to automate that process using AI agents.
On Monday, the company announced a $21 million Series A round led by Dawn Capital, bringing total funding to $26 million from investors including Visionaries and 2100 Ventures, according to TechCrunch.
The Orbio Agents
Orbio has developed three AI agents — named Maria, Daniel, and Claire — that handle the full employee lifecycle. According to Bastardas, these agents can interview candidates, assess fit, monitor employee output, and conduct daily check-ins. “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,” he explained.
The goal is to let businesses run their workforces autonomously, engaging and supporting frontline employees while delegating workforce operations to AI, Bastardas said.
Customer Adoption and Results
Orbio’s customers already include quick-service restaurant chains YUM! Brands (which owns Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC) and Poke, as well as behavioral health provider The Stepping Stones Group. Bastardas noted that customers are moving from pilot to full deployment. At The Stepping Stones Group, Orbio now runs the company’s entire US operation, and “20% more candidates making it through to get hired,” according to TechCrunch.
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Candidates hired (The Stepping Stones Group) | 20% increase |
| Total funding to date | $26 million |
| Series A amount | $21 million |
| Lead investor | Dawn Capital |
Competitive Landscape
Orbio competes with startups like Paradox, which automates recruiting, and WorkJam, which manages frontline employees. However, Bastardas considers Orbio’s biggest competitor to be the traditional, fragmented approach — often still reliant on spreadsheets and phone calls, especially in healthcare, retail, and logistics.
Investment and Outlook
The fresh capital will be used to hire staff and develop more AI agents, Bastardas said. He positioned Orbio as a transformative force for the workforce: “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.”
For enterprise technology leaders overseeing logistics or supply chain operations, Orbio’s AI-driven approach could reduce manual HR overhead, improve hiring throughput, and provide real-time engagement data — factors that directly affect warehouse and distribution-center productivity.
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