After Sergi Bastardas’ decade at Amazon and floriculture startup Colvin, one thing always stood out  — the feeling that there wasn’t enough efficient “human infrastructure” to manage the workers behind the scenes. He took this feeling and, in 2025, alongside his co-founders Nacho Travesí and Antonio Melé, launched Orbio, an enterprise startup that helps businesses manage frontline workers — using AI agents, of course. 

On Monday, the company 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 frontline employees. Bastardas said customers are progressing from using Orbio in pilot to now fully deploying the software. As an example, he said that at behavioral health provider The Stepping Stones Group, Orbio now runs the company’s full US operation, with 20% more candidates making it through to get hired

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

“Each agent generates data that feeds back into the others: onboarding signals inform recruiting quality; exit interviews reveal why employees leave, which recalibrates hiring criteria; engagement data identifies retention risks,” he continued. 

Orbio competes with several startups — such as Paradox, which helps automate recruiting, and WorkJam, which helps manage frontline employees. 

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

“This will be [a] transformation for businesses, but also the workforce,” Bastardas said. “The 2.7 billion people who keep healthcare, retail, logistics, and hospitality running, most of whom don’t have a corporate email address, have previously got nothing. This is their AI moment.” 

Charlie Javice, the startup founder who was sentenced to seven years in prison last fall, is seeking a pardon from President Donald Trump, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Javice was convicted of defrauding JPMorgan Chase after the bank acquired her financial services startup Frank for $175 million. The bank accused Javice of lying about how many customers the startup had, with former Frank employees testifying that she’d asked them to create fake user data.

In addition to asking Trump for a pardon, Javice is appealing her conviction. JPMorgan, meanwhile, has tried to get out of paying her legal bills.

The Trump administration is reportedly considering a plan to commemorate the United States’ 250th birthday with 250 pardons. The president has already pardoned hundreds of people during his second term, mostly white-collar criminals, including Travis Milton, founder of hydrogen trucking startup Nikola; Silk Road creator Russ Ulbricht; and Binance founder Changpeng Zhao.

Javice isn’t the only convicted former tech executive hoping for Trump’s help: Sam Bankman-Fried, the FTX co-founder serving a 25-year sentence for money laundering and fraud, recently applied for a pardon. 

Charlie Javice, the convicted Frank founder, is reportedly seeking a presidential pardon, with her camp quietly courting people close to the Trump administration, according to the WSJ. So far, her name hasn’t turned up on a formal clemency request list at the Justice Department, it adds.

That list is growing fast. As the administration reportedly weighs handing out roughly 250 pardons this summer to mark America’s 250th birthday, a wave of clemency requests is pouring in from white-collar defendants — including Sam Bankman-Fried.

JPMorgan can’t be pleased by any of this. Last September, Javice was found guilty of fabricating millions of customer accounts to inflate her startup’s value before selling it to the bank for $175 million. She’s now serving more than seven years and is appealing, arguing the case against her was unfair.

The bank may have extra cause for concern given its relationship with President Trump. In early 2021, it closed accounts tied to Trump and his businesses shortly after the January 6 Capitol riot, a move that Trump has since called political “debanking,” suing JPMorgan and CEO Jamie Dimon for $5 billion. (JPMorgan denies any political motive.)

Javice has powerful friends, too, including Apollo’s Marc Rowan, an early Frank investor who testified on her behalf at trial. Rowan has donated to Trump’s campaigns and, since his reelection, has given millions more to Republican congressional groups.