When we think about the future of work, we usually picture software engineers or remote workers. But nearly 70% of the global workforce — over 100 million jobs in the U.S. alone — are frontline workers who keep the physical world running. These are warehouse staff, machine operators, construction crews, delivery drivers and other service workers who altogether contribute $4 trillion to the U.S. economy.
Our journey at Reach started in education, which offers a powerful pathway to help people get better jobs. Across our portfolio, Reach has backed many leaders in workforce development, including Stepful, Springboard, Aprende Institute, Handshake, and WorkWhile. Now, we are also focused on helping workers thrive on the job — especially those who have been largely neglected by modern software.
The “deskless” workforce has long been overlooked. Most productivity tools, such as Slack, Notion, or Excel, are powerful, but built for office knowledge workers. They don’t translate to the fast, physical, hands-on nature of jobs on the construction site, warehouse, or shop floor.
At the same time, these industries face persistent challenges: high turnover, low morale, and flatlining productivity. In industries like construction, manufacturing, and health care, chronic understaffing and aging workforces only add fuel to the need to improve productivity. When experienced workers leave faster than new ones can be trained, it creates serious knowledge gaps.
Yet frontline workers are also eager adopters of technology: 70% say they want better tech to do their jobs. They are people like my father, a car mechanic, who recently began using ChatGPT — inputting check engine codes, snapping photos of warning lights, asking car model-specific questions, and handling administrative tasks, all from his phone. Watching him has shown me how AI can meet frontliners where they are and help them be more productive.
The opportunity is clear: AI can become the co-pilot frontline workers have never had, providing support at the right time, in the right place.
AI Is Enabling New Interfaces for Frontline Work
Most software assumes the user is sitting at a desk. But frontline workers are on their feet, using their hands and eyes in dynamic environments where pulling out a laptop or even a phone can get in the way of the job. That’s why we believe the biggest shift isn’t just about what these tools do, but how they’re accessed.
Generative AI, paired with multimodal interfaces like voice and computer vision, is unlocking entirely new possibilities for the frontline worker. AI can now be embedded directly into the workflow through audio prompts, visual recognition, or lightweight devices — finally allowing technology to meet workers where they are, without disrupting the task at hand (literally). AI is making productivity tools usable for the frontline — naturally, in the flow of work.
This also means that the future of work for frontliners will be inseparable from the future of learning. The traditional boundaries between learning and doing are collapsing. These solutions can now live right where the work happens — blending coaching, instruction, and execution into a single experience that frontline workers and their managers rely on daily to get the job done.
Because these tools are integrated into operations — not tucked away in HR or L&D — they’re closer to the delivery of work. That proximity means the potential to drive stronger ROI and sticker adoption, particularly for tools that are tailored to specific industries and roles. We’re already seeing these come to life in our portfolio: companies like Replit and Lablabee are showing how tools built for doing — writing code or simulating telecom environments — can also become powerful engines for learning.
Frontline Tech Investment Opportunities
We see three major areas of opportunity where AI and new interfaces are reshaping the future of frontline work:
- Verticalized Productivity Tools
Frontline workers operate with unique rhythms, tools, and environments, and most desktop work software often fails to align with the nature of their work. Advances in AI like optical character recognition (OCR), voice input, and video analysis are enabling tools to adapt to frontline tasks — like field reporting or inventory counting — rather than force workers to adapt to the software. This opens the door to a new generation of productivity tools tailored to specific industries and job sites, not the back office, that deliver significant efficiency gains. - On-the-Job Copilots
One of the biggest barriers to frontline productivity is the lack of coaching: managers simply don’t have the time to coach every worker. Using voice, video, or sensor data, AI copilots can deliver real-time support at scale. These tools help workers absorb important informal knowledge (usually undocumented and passed through word of mouth), enforce operating procedures, and get guidance exactly when they need it. Whether it’s an assembly line worker getting feedback on quality or a construction foreman reviewing safety protocols, these copilots bring institutional knowledge and expertise right into the flow of work. - Agentic Sidekicks
Much of the work that slows down frontline teams isn’t the core task. It’s everything around it: scheduling, dispatch, tracking, reporting, and other mundane tasks often spread across fragmented systems like email, spreadsheets, text messages and phone calls. This “invisible overhead” slows down productivity and is prone to human input error. But AI agents can now handle the repetitive, unstructured tasks before they even reach the frontline. These “sidekicks” reduce cognitive load and free up time for higher-leverage work, while also improving communication across teams.
After months of research, conversations, and exploration, our conviction around this thesis has only grown stronger. The deck below outlines the insights, data, and market maps shaping our perspective. Dive in and let us know what resonates (or doesn’t)!
Let’s Build With You
We believe the future of work must include the people who keep the world running. The tradesperson. The factory line operator. The server. The technician. This is a massive market hiding in plain sight, and AI is finally making it possible to build tools that actually serve them.
We’re looking for founders who are rethinking how frontline work gets done, especially those who:
- reimagine software interfaces for the realities of frontline work in an AI world — whether that be voice, image, mobile, or something else entirely;
- know the workflows because they’ve lived them — whether as operators, domain experts, or insiders;
- understand that great products in this space don’t just digitize paperwork — they unlock dignity, performance, and opportunity for workers.
We’re also eager to connect with co-investors and partners who share this vision, and with companies seeking new solutions to empower their frontline teams. If you’re building for this workforce, we’d love to hear from you.
📩 enzo@reachcapital.com.