Orbio raises $21 million to automate the hiring and onboarding process for frontline workers

After Sergey Bastardas’s decade at Amazon and flower farming startup Colvin, one thing always stood out – the feeling that there wasn’t enough effective “human infrastructure” to manage the workers behind the scenes. He took this feeling, and in 2025, along with his co-founders Nacho Travisi and Antonio Melli, Orbio launcheda startup that helps companies manage frontline workers — using AI agents, of course.

The company on Monday announced a $21 million Series A in a round led by Dawn Capital. The startup says its customers already include Poke and YUM! Brands (owners of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC), to onboard and manage their front-line employees. Customers are progressing from using Orbio in beta to now fully deploying the software, Bastardas said. For example, he said that at Stepping Stones Group, which provides behavioral health services, Orbio now runs the company’s entire U.S. operations, with a 20% increase in candidates for hire.

Orbio agents (Maria, Daniel and Claire) can interview candidates, assess their suitability, monitor employee output and conduct daily check-ins throughout the employee’s work lifecycle. The goal is to help companies manage their workforce autonomously, Bastardas said, adding that companies will be able to engage and support their frontline workforce while delegating some workforce operations to AI agents.

He continued: “Each agent creates data that feeds into the others: onboarding signals that signal quality of hire; exit interviews reveal why employees leave, recalibrating hiring standards; and engagement data identifies retention risks.”

Orbio competes with several startups — such as Paradox, which helps automate the hiring process, and WorkJam, which helps manage front-line employees.

Bastardas considers Orbio’s biggest competitor to be the outdated approach to how front-line workers are managed (particularly in industries like healthcare, retail, and logistics) — a fragmented process that still sometimes involves spreadsheets and phone calls. But all this is changing rapidly in the age of artificial intelligence. Orbio has raised $26 million in funding to date from investors, including Visionaries and 2100 Ventures. Bastardas said the new capital will be used to hire and develop more AI agents.

“This will be transformative for companies, but also for the workforce,” Bastardas said. “The 2.7 billion people working in healthcare, retail, logistics and hospitality, most of whom don’t have a corporate email address, previously had nothing. This is their AI moment.”