The CEO Running .txt From a Château With a Real Moat

Rémi Louf, cofounder and CEO of the AI startup .txt, works out of a 19th-century castle in Bourron-Marlotte, France. The building has iron gates and a literal moat.

Louf said the setting is not just a talking point. 'It gives the team a sense of purpose and focus that you don't get from a WeWork,' he said. The castle's isolation, he argued, helps employees disconnect from the noise of Paris and concentrate on building product.

The company, which builds command-line tools for AI, has grown to roughly a dozen people. Louf described the daily rhythm: long walks in the grounds, collaborative coding sessions by the fireplace, and the occasional moat-cleaning duty.

'There's something about walking over a drawbridge every morning that changes how you think about barriers to entry,' he said.

For now, .txt remains small. Louf has no plans to move the office to a conventional space. 'Our competitors are in glass towers,' he said. 'We're in a stone box with water around it. That difference matters.'