Pay by the Task, Not the Hour – Gig Workforce Rebuilt

01 /The Concept

Traxlo built workforce infrastructure for grocery stores, warehouses, and brands – focused specifically on temporary workers.

The idea itself isn't unusual. What is unusual is how those workers get paid: not by the hour, but by completed task. Tasks range from a few dozen minutes to a few hours.

For grocery stores, typical tasks include stocking shelves, pulling expired items, checking fill levels, relabeling prices, and participating in inventory counts.

For warehouses, the common tasks are loading boxes into shipping containers, unloading pallets, and applying shipping labels.

For brands, the typical work involves checking store shelves for product availability and correct placement, auditing in-store brand displays, and other field operations for monitoring shelf presence.

Temporary workers browse available jobs in the Tasku app, filtering by location, time, duration, and pay. Each job comes with step-by-step instructions viewable before accepting, and accessible throughout the work itself.

Once a job application is confirmed, the worker receives a time window within which to arrive and complete the assignment. They clock in with a "Start" tap and follow in-app instructions from there.

Pay is processed weekly every Thursday, with Traxlo transferring the earned amount directly to the worker's bank account.

Traxlo was founded in Lithuania in 2020. Over the past five years it has signed a significant number of large European clients. The startup has now raised €1.6M in new funding to deepen its presence in existing European markets and launch in Czech Republic and Romania – its largest round to date, bringing total funding to $3.1M.

02 /Why It Matters

One notable aspect of Traxlo's infrastructure: it works even in smaller cities of around 20,000 people, where stores, warehouses, and brands can still find enough workers for tasks that don't require a standard 8-hour shift.

Employers also benefit from not paying for full shifts when they only need specific tasks completed. That alone cuts labor costs for this type of work by at least 10–20%.

And the hassle of managing this is set to shrink further. Today, store managers post tasks manually and store staff oversee completion. But Traxlo plans to launch AI that automatically generates task assignments and monitors execution through AI agents equipped with computer vision.

The endgame: workers will complete standardized tasks assigned by AI, verified by AI. Which sets up the next step – full automation, where the same tasks get executed by robots. Either Traxlo's own, or rented specifically for individual task completion.

This makes Traxlo a transitional infrastructure platform – one that lets grocery stores, warehouses, and brands prepare for robotic operations now, without changing their actual business processes. When the transition comes, they won't need to redesign anything. They'll simply swap the humans out and slot robots in.

Meaning these companies can keep using the Traxlo platform they already know. The startup is delivering value today while locking in its position for a future where human workers are gradually replaced by machines.

But that transition won't happen everywhere at once. Robots will be deployed only when and where they're cheaper than people – and in many contexts, human labor will remain cost-competitive for a long time.

In practice, humans and robots will coexist for years. Traxlo's platform can manage both within the same operational structure. That makes it a genuinely smart investment for companies that are thinking ahead but want to get there gradually.

03 /Opportunities

A business running well isn't built on heroics – it runs on steady, well-defined processes.

The problem is that AI – whether AI agents or physical robots – forces those processes to change. And AI's development trajectory suggests this pressure will continue for a long time.

But companies can't redesign their operations every time AI capabilities shift. The ideal outcome: restructure processes at a high level so that individual components can be swapped out – plugging in AI wherever it proves cheaper and more effective than a human.

That's exactly what Traxlo has built its positioning around: labor infrastructure for the AI era. Infrastructure where the work can be performed by either robots or people – and the infrastructure itself doesn't care which.

But this challenge isn't unique to grocery stores, warehouses, and brand merchandising. The same need exists across many industries.

The timely startup opportunity: build similar "transitional" infrastructure for other sectors preparing for the gradual introduction of AI – whether as software agents or as robots.

The most promising entry points are industries that already rely on task-based or shift-based labor – hospitality, facility management, field services, healthcare support roles – where the work is structured enough for AI to audit and eventually execute, but complex enough that full automation is still years away. The strategic window is now: build the infrastructure layer while human labor still dominates, so the platform is already embedded when the economics shift toward machines.