Orbio Raises $21M to Deploy AI Agents for Frontline Hiring

Orbio lands Series A to automate workforce operations

Orbio, an enterprise software startup founded in 2025, announced a $21 million Series A round led by Dawn Capital on Monday. The Barcelona-based company deploys AI agents to handle hiring, onboarding, and ongoing management of frontline workers—the employees in retail, healthcare, logistics, and hospitality who typically lack access to traditional HR technology.

Founder and CEO Sergi Bastardas spent a decade at Amazon and floriculture startup Colvin, where he observed persistent inefficiencies in managing large workforces. He launched Orbio with co-founders Nacho Travesí and Antonio Melé to address what he calls a lack of "human infrastructure" for the 2.7 billion frontline workers globally, most of whom don't have corporate email addresses.

The platform's three AI agents—Maria, Daniel, and Claire—conduct candidate interviews, assess job fit, monitor employee performance, and run daily check-ins throughout the employment lifecycle. Orbio's customers include Poke and YUM! Brands, which operates Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC. At behavioral health provider The Stepping Stones Group, Orbio now manages the company's entire U.S. operation and has increased the candidate-to-hire conversion rate by 20 percent, according to Bastardas.

Why it matters

Frontline workers represent the largest segment of the global workforce, yet they've historically been underserved by HR technology built for desk-based employees. As labor shortages persist across service industries, companies face mounting pressure to streamline recruiting and reduce turnover. Orbio's approach creates a feedback loop: onboarding data informs recruiting quality, exit interviews reveal why employees leave and adjust hiring criteria, and engagement metrics flag retention risks. This closed-loop system could materially reduce the cost and time required to staff high-turnover operations—a critical advantage for enterprises operating at scale.

From pilot to production deployment

Bastardas told TechCrunch that customers are moving beyond pilot programs to full production deployments of the software. The platform generates interconnected data across the employee lifecycle, with each agent feeding insights to the others. Exit interview findings recalibrate hiring criteria, while engagement signals identify workers at risk of leaving.

Orbio competes with recruiting automation platform Paradox and frontline management tool WorkJam. However, Bastardas considers the company's primary competition to be legacy processes—fragmented systems that still rely on spreadsheets and phone calls in many organizations.

The company has raised $26 million to date from investors including Visionaries and 2100 Ventures. Bastardas said the new capital will fund hiring and the development of additional AI agents to expand the platform's capabilities.

These details were first reported by TechCrunch.