Orbio raises $21 million to automate hiring and onboarding for frontline employees

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 embrace Poke and YUM! Manufacturers (house owners 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 absolutely deploying the software program. For example, he stated that at behavioral Health 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 each 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 indicators 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 — corresponding to Paradox, which helps automate recruiting, and WorkJam, which helps handle frontline staff. 

Bastardas considers Orbio’s largest 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 telephone calls. All of that is altering quickly, nevertheless, within the age of AI. Orbio has raised $26 million in funding up to now 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 working, most of whom don’t have a company electronic mail handle, have beforehand bought nothing. That is their AI second.”