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 Orbio, an enterprise startup that helps companies handle frontline employees — utilizing AI brokers, after all.
On Monday, the corporate introduced a $21 million Collection A in a spherical led by Daybreak Capital. The startup says its prospects already embody Poke and YUM! Manufacturers (homeowners of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC), to onboard and handle their frontline staff. Bastardas stated prospects are progressing from utilizing Orbio in pilot to now totally deploying the software program. For instance, 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 via to get employed
The Orbio brokers (Maria, Daniel, and Claire) can interview candidates, assess match, monitor worker output, and conduct every day check-ins all through an worker’s work lifecycle. The purpose is to assist companies run their workforces autonomously, Bastardas stated, including that companies will be capable of interact 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 alerts inform recruiting high quality; exit interviews reveal why staff depart, which recalibrates hiring standards; engagement knowledge identifies retention dangers,” he continued.
Orbio competes with a number of startups — reminiscent of Paradox, which helps automate recruiting, and WorkJam, which helps handle frontline staff.
Bastardas considers Orbio’s greatest competitor to be the legacy strategy, nevertheless, to how frontline employees are managed (particularly in industries like healthcare, retail, and logistics) — a fragmented course of that generally nonetheless includes spreadsheets and cellphone calls. All of that is altering quickly, nevertheless, within the age of AI. Orbio has raised $26 million in funding to this point from buyers, together with Visionaries and 2100 Ventures. Bastardas stated the contemporary capital shall be used to rent and develop extra AI brokers.
“This shall be [a] transformation for companies, but additionally the workforce,” Bastardas stated. “The two.7 billion individuals who maintain healthcare, retail, logistics, and hospitality operating, most of whom don’t have a company e mail handle, have beforehand received nothing. That is their AI second.”
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