Orbio bets AI agents, not spreadsheets, run frontline hiring and workforce ops

Orbio is a Spanish startup betting that the 2.7 billion people who keep healthcare, retail, logistics and hospitality running — most without a corporate email address — are the largest unserved market in enterprise software. Its answer is a suite of AI agents, named Maria, Daniel and Claire, that interview candidates, assess fit, run onboarding, monitor output and conduct daily check-ins across a frontline employee's whole lifecycle.

The bet came from CEO Sergi Bastardas, who spent a decade at Amazon and flower-delivery startup Colvin watching frontline operations run on spreadsheets, phone calls and fragmented manual processes. In 2025 he and co-founders Nacho Travesí and Antonio Melé launched Orbio to replace that with agents that feed data into each other: onboarding signals inform recruiting quality, exit interviews recalibrate hiring criteria, and engagement data flags retention risk.

In June 2026 Orbio announced a $21 million Series A led by London-based Dawn Capital, bringing total funding to $26 million. Customers already include Poke House and YUM! Brands, owner of KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. At behavioral health provider The Stepping Stones Group, a pilot grew eightfold and now runs the company's entire US operation: interview bookings rose from 65% to 85%, candidate satisfaction sits above 98%, and 20% more candidates make it through to being hired.

The company frames its competition as the legacy approach rather than other software vendors, and says the capital will go toward hiring and developing more AI agents as customers rebuild their operating models around the platform.