After Sergi Bastardas’ decade at Amazon and floriculture startup Colvin, one factor at all times stood out — the sensation that there wasn’t sufficient environment friendly “human infrastructure” to handle the employees behind the scenes. He took this sense and, in 2025, alongside his co-founders Nacho Travesí and Antonio Melé, launched Orbioan enterprise startup that helps companies handle frontline employees — utilizing AI brokers, in fact.
On Monday, the corporate introduced a $21 million Sequence A in a spherical led by Daybreak Capital. The startup says its prospects already embrace Poke and YUM! Manufacturers (homeowners of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC), to onboard and handle their frontline workers. Bastardas stated prospects are progressing from utilizing Orbio in pilot to now totally deploying the software program. For example, he stated that at behavioral well being supplier The Stepping Stones Group, Orbio now runs the corporate’s full US operation, with 20% extra candidates making it by means of to get employed
The Orbio brokers (Maria, Daniel, and Claire) can interview candidates, assess match, monitor worker output, and conduct day by day check-ins all through an worker’s work lifecycle. The aim is to assist companies run their workforces autonomously, Bastardas stated, including that companies will be capable of have interaction and assist the frontline workforces whereas additionally delegating some workforce operations to AI brokers.
“Every agent generates knowledge that feeds again into the others: onboarding indicators inform recruiting high quality; exit interviews reveal why workers depart, which recalibrates hiring standards; engagement knowledge identifies retention dangers,” he continued.
Orbio competes with a number of startups — equivalent to Paradox, which helps automate recruiting, and WorkJam, which helps handle frontline workers.
Bastardas considers Orbio’s greatest competitor to be the legacy method, nevertheless, to how frontline employees are managed (particularly in industries like healthcare, retail, and logistics) — a fragmented course of that generally nonetheless entails spreadsheets and cellphone calls. All of that is altering quickly, nevertheless, within the age of AI. Orbio has raised $26 million in funding so far from buyers, together with Visionaries and 2100 Ventures. Bastardas stated the recent capital might be used to rent and develop extra AI brokers.
“This might be (a) transformation for companies, but in addition the workforce,” Bastardas stated. “The two.7 billion individuals who preserve healthcare, retail, logistics, and hospitality operating, most of whom don’t have a company e-mail tackle, have beforehand received nothing. That is their AI second.”
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