- Orbio has secured $21 million in Series A funding led by Dawn Capital, less than a year after launching. The company aims to automate hiring and workforce management for frontline employees.
- This funding focuses on the 2.7 billion deskless workers worldwide, a group often overlooked by enterprise software designed for office settings.
- One early US customer in behavioural health saw candidate booking rates rise from 65% to 85% and backout rates drop by about half after using the platform.
80% of the global workforce, including shift managers, warehouse operators, and care workers, has never had a corporate email address. For the past 20 years, enterprise software has mainly served office workers. Orbio, an AI platform for frontline hiring, has raised $21 million to help close this gap.
Dawn Capital, a London-based B2B software investor managing $2 billion, led the Series A round. Visionaries VC, Plus Partners, and Enzo Ventures also continued their support. Since launching in June 2025, Orbio has raised about $28 million in total.
“This is not a talent shortage problem, it’s a talent allocation problem. The people are there. The work is there. What’s been missing is the ability to connect frontline workers with opportunities quickly, consistently and at scale,” says CEO Sergi Bastardas.
A problem enterprise software has long ignored
Bastardas saw this problem during his ten years at Amazon and as co-founder of Colvin, where he noticed there was no efficient way to manage frontline workers. He started Orbio in mid-2025 with Nacho Travesí, who built Cobee, which was later acquired by Pluxee, and Antonio Melé, co-founder of Nucoro, which was acquired by Backbase.
In many frontline industries, annual employee turnover is over 70%. According to Mordor Intelligence, the global HR technology market was worth $47.5 billion in 2026 and could reach $77.7 billion by 2031. Still, most of this investment has not focused on deskless workers.
Today, Orbio has more than 20 employees working in over 20 countries across Europe, the US, and Latin America.
How it works and why it’s different
The platform uses AI agents through WhatsApp and phone calls, so no corporate login or email is needed. Candidates can apply, get a response in seconds, complete an AI-led interview, and start onboarding the same day. For fast-food operators and shift workers, the process is fully automated each month and does not require a recruiter.
Orbio’s approach is ever different from other HR software. Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, and Oracle HCM were built for office workers.
Newer AI platforms like Paradox and WorkJam offer advanced automation but mainly focus on knowledge workers or shift scheduling. Orbio believes that hiring for frontline roles, which involve high volume and turnover and happen through messaging apps and calls, is a unique challenge that has not been fully addressed.
A US customer shows Orbio’s impact. The Stepping Stones Group, which provides behavioural health services for children with autism, saw interview bookings rise from 65% to 85% after using Orbio, and backout rates dropped by about half.
“Orbio has given our autism recruiting team countless hours back each week, recovering capacity that used to be locked up in manual CV review and scheduling. Speed-to-qualify dropped from hours to minutes, and candidate backout rates have been cut roughly in half. We’re now scaling the team’s output without scaling the team,” notes Mason Burk, the company’s senior product development manager.
Other customers include YUM! Brands, like KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Poke House, fashion group AWWG, Adecco, and Atento.
Dawn Capital’s bet
Dawn Capital has also invested in Tink, Quantexa, and Mimecast, all enterprise software companies that replaced older systems in established markets. Their belief in Orbio is similar.
“What stands out about Orbio is the speed at which customers have completely rebuilt their operating models around it. In a matter of months, some of the world’s largest employers have embraced AI-first frontline workforce management with Orbio at the core, replacing labour budgets in a permanent way,” adds Henry Mason, partner at Dawn Capital.
The new funding will help Orbio expand into more markets and continue developing its agent suite for every stage of the employee lifecycle.
A big question is how long Orbio can keep its lead before bigger companies respond. Workday and SAP already have strong enterprise relationships, compliance systems, and the resources to move into frontline HR through acquisitions. Orbio’s advantages are fast deployment and highly specialised data. Its agents have been trained on millions of frontline conversations in healthcare, hospitality, and logistics, which is hard for larger platforms to copy quickly.
How long Orbio can keep this lead is the risk Dawn Capital is willing to take.
