While the giants spend billions on AI „engineers" that still have no product, a Spanish startup quietly raised money for something far more down-to-earth - to manage the workers at fast-food chains. Orbio received 21 million dollars (around 19 million euros) in a funding round led by Dawn Capital, with clients that already include YUM! Brands - the owner of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC.

The idea is AI agents with names - Maria, Daniel, and Clare - who interview candidates, assess whether they fit, track productivity, and run daily checks across the employee's entire working life. In other words, the whole HR department replaced by software. „Every agent creates data that feeds the others," says co-founder Sergi Bastardas - the exit interviews reveal why people leave, which then recalibrates the hiring criteria.

Bastardas packages it as liberation: „2.7 billion people who hold up healthcare, retail, and logistics, most of them without a corporate email, have nothing so far. This is their AI moment." It sounds nice - until you ask whose moment it actually is when a machine decides whether you'll be hired, whether you're doing well, and when you'll be let go.

For a worker kneading pizza or driving a truck, the difference between „an autonomously managed team" and „a boss who is an algorithm" is subtle, but it matters. The technology that promises to free the most vulnerable workers is at the same time taking away their last thing too - the human on the other side of the table. The question isn't whether Orbio will grow, but who will ultimately answer when an agent named Clare fires you through an app.