The modern office does not look the way it did a few years ago. Teams are more flexible, employees expect better workplace experiences, and companies no longer want to be locked into old real estate models that feel too expensive, too slow, or too rigid. That shift has created a new kind of problem. Businesses still need physical spaces where people can meet, collaborate, and build culture, but they do not always have the time, staff, or systems to manage every small office task by hand.
That is where Christelle Rohaut has found a clear opportunity. As the co-founder and CEO of Codi, she is working on a smarter way to run offices, one that blends flexible real estate, workplace operations, vendor coordination, and AI-powered automation.
Codi started with a simple idea: make office space easier and more flexible for companies that do not fit the old long-term lease model. Over time, the company has grown into something bigger. Today, Codi is positioning itself as an AI Office Manager, helping teams handle the everyday work of running a physical office without drowning in admin tasks, emails, spreadsheets, invoices, and vendor follow-ups.
For Christelle Rohaut, the goal is not just to help companies find an office. It is to help them run that office better.
Who is Christelle Rohaut
Christelle Rohaut is the co-founder and CEO of Codi, a San Francisco-based workplace company focused on making offices more flexible, easier to manage, and better suited to modern teams. She co-founded the company with Dave Schuman in 2018, at a time when many businesses were starting to question whether the traditional office lease still made sense.
Her work sits at the intersection of commercial real estate, hybrid work, office management, AI automation, and workplace experience. That mix matters because the office is no longer just a place where people sit from 9 to 5. For many companies, it has become a tool for culture, collaboration, recruiting, brand identity, and employee connection.
What makes Christelle Rohaut interesting as a founder is the way she has allowed Codi to evolve with the market. The company did not stay fixed in one narrow category. It began by helping companies access flexible office space, then expanded into move-in support and office services, and later moved deeper into AI-driven office operations.
That kind of shift shows a founder paying attention to what customers actually need. Companies were not only asking for space. They were asking for relief from the constant work of making that space usable.
What Codi does for modern workplaces
At its core, Codi helps companies manage the practical side of the office. In its earlier form, the company helped teams find flexible private offices with shorter and more adaptable lease terms than traditional commercial real estate often allows. That made sense for startups, hybrid teams, and growing companies that needed a physical workplace but did not want the risk of a long, expensive lease.
But finding the space is only one part of the office problem. After a company signs for an office, the real work begins. Someone has to coordinate furniture, cleaning, internet, access systems, pantry restocking, repairs, move-in tasks, and vendor communication. These are not glamorous tasks, but they shape whether an office feels smooth or frustrating.
Codi built experience around those details. The company helped teams with office setup, furnishings, IT, cleaning, coffee, snacks, and ongoing workplace management. That gave Christelle Rohaut and her team a close view of how much manual work sits behind every functioning office.
The result is Codi’s broader workplace platform, built for companies that want the benefits of a physical office without carrying the full administrative load themselves.
Why office management became harder for companies
Office management has become more complicated because the way people use offices has changed. Before hybrid work became common, many companies had a more predictable rhythm. Employees came in most days, office managers handled daily needs, and long-term leases were treated as a normal cost of doing business.
Today, the picture is less simple. Some employees come in a few days a week. Some teams are spread across cities. Some startups want a private office but only need it part-time. Some companies are returning to the office while still keeping lean operations teams.
That creates a strange gap. Companies still need well-run spaces, but they often do not have a full-time office manager focused only on logistics. In many cases, office tasks fall on a chief of staff, an executive assistant, a founder, a people operations team, or an operations lead who already has too much on their plate.
The work adds up quickly. Cleaning schedules, pantry supplies, furniture orders, IT requests, access control, vendor invoices, broken equipment, office moves, and daily employee needs can turn into a constant stream of interruptions. Even when each task seems small, together they can become a real drag on productivity.
This is the pain point Christelle Rohaut is trying to solve with Codi.
How Christelle Rohaut turned real office problems into software
One reason Codi feels different from a typical office software tool is that it grew out of hands-on work. Christelle Rohaut and her team did not start with a theory about office management. They spent years helping companies find spaces, move in, work with vendors, and keep offices running.
That experience gave Codi a practical advantage. The team saw which tasks were repetitive, where communication broke down, which vendors mattered, and what companies struggled to coordinate. Over time, those repeated patterns became the foundation for a more automated system.
This matters because office management is not purely digital. It touches the physical world. An AI tool cannot simply mark a task as complete if the pantry was not stocked, the furniture was not installed, or the internet was not working. It needs to coordinate with real vendors, real schedules, real spaces, and real people.
That is the bridge Codi is trying to build. The company is using AI not just to organize information, but to help execute office tasks that normally require human follow-up.
The AI Office Manager idea
Codi’s AI Office Manager is designed to make office logistics easier by putting common workplace needs into one platform. Instead of employees and operations teams chasing vendors across emails, spreadsheets, and scattered tools, Codi aims to centralize those requests and automate the coordination.
The platform focuses on practical office tasks such as cleaning, furniture setup, internet, IT, pantry restocking, maintenance requests, and vendor management. These are exactly the kinds of tasks that can quietly consume hours every week inside a growing company.
The idea is simple but powerful. A team should not need to manually manage every office service just to keep the workplace running. If AI can support digital workflows, Christelle Rohaut believes it can also support the operational workflows behind physical spaces.
That is why Codi’s shift into AI office management feels timely. Many companies are already using AI to write, code, summarize, analyze data, and automate internal processes. Codi is bringing that same automation mindset into the office, where many systems still feel stuck in the past.
Why Codi matters for hybrid teams
Hybrid work has made office strategy more personal and more flexible. Companies want employees to come in, but they also know that the office has to earn the commute. A poorly managed workplace can make the return-to-office push feel frustrating. A well-run office can make in-person time feel useful, productive, and worth it.
This is where Codi fits into the future of work. The company is not only selling space or software. It is helping businesses create offices that are easier to operate and easier to enjoy.
For startups and growing teams, that can be especially valuable. They may want the culture-building power of a private office, but they may not have a large operations department. They may want flexibility, but they still need reliability. They may want a beautiful workplace, but they do not want leadership distracted by furniture vendors, cleaning contracts, or pantry supplies.
By handling more of the operational layer, Codi gives companies a way to focus on the parts of office life that matter most: collaboration, connection, team energy, and business growth.
Codi’s growth and investor backing
Codi’s progress has also attracted serious investor attention. The company raised a $16 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z, in 2022. That funding helped support Codi’s mission to rethink the physical office for a hybrid work era.
Investor backing does not automatically prove a company will win, but it does show that the problem is large enough to matter. Office management, workplace flexibility, and commercial real estate are massive markets. If Codi can make offices simpler to lease, set up, and run, it sits in a valuable position between proptech, facilities management, and workplace operations software.
The company’s move into AI also gives it a sharper identity. Instead of being seen only as a flexible office marketplace, Codi is now building toward a broader operating system for the workplace.
How Codi saves time for operations teams
The value of Codi becomes easier to understand when you look at the daily life of an operations team. A single office can require dozens of small decisions and follow-ups every week. Who handles the cleaning issue? Did the snack order arrive? Is the Wi-Fi problem fixed? When is the furniture delivery coming? Who is managing access for new employees? Which vendor sent that invoice?
These tasks are important, but they are also distracting. When they are handled manually, they can create delays, missed messages, and unnecessary stress.
Codi’s platform is built to reduce that friction. By bringing office logistics into one system and using AI to coordinate tasks, the company aims to save administrative time and lower the overhead tied to office management. Codi has publicly stated that its AI Office Manager can save companies hundreds of administrative hours and reduce office management overhead by up to 83 percent.
For lean teams, that promise is especially appealing. It means fewer hours spent chasing office problems and more time spent on people, product, customers, and growth.
Christelle Rohaut’s bigger vision for smarter offices
Christelle Rohaut is not simply trying to make office admin a little easier. Her bigger vision is to change how companies think about the office itself.
The old model treated the office as a fixed asset. A company signed a long lease, paid for a buildout, hired people to manage the space, and absorbed the complexity as part of doing business. That model can still work for some large companies, but it does not fit every team anymore.
The newer model sees the office more like a service. Companies want flexibility, speed, better support, and systems that can scale as their needs change. Codi is building around that idea.
Under Christelle Rohaut’s leadership, the company has moved from helping businesses access flexible space to helping them run any office with less manual effort. That shift makes Codi part of a larger movement toward smarter workplaces, where physical spaces are managed with the same level of intelligence companies now expect from their digital tools.
What other founders can learn from Christelle Rohaut
There are a few clear lessons in the way Christelle Rohaut has built Codi.
The first is to stay close to the customer’s real problem. Codi could have remained focused only on flexible office listings, but the team noticed that companies needed much more than space. They needed help making the office work day after day.
The second lesson is to let the product evolve with the market. Hybrid work, return-to-office plans, rising real estate uncertainty, and AI adoption all changed the workplace landscape. Codi responded by expanding its role from office access to office operations.
The third lesson is that AI becomes more useful when it is tied to a specific, painful workflow. Office management is full of repeated tasks, vendor coordination, and time-consuming follow-ups. That makes it a strong area for automation, especially when the company building the tool already understands the messy details.
For founders, Christelle Rohaut’s path shows the value of learning from service work, turning repeated problems into software, and building around a market shift before it becomes obvious to everyone.
Why Christelle Rohaut’s work stands out in the future of work
The future of work is often discussed through remote tools, video calls, AI assistants, and productivity software. But the physical office still matters. People still need spaces where teams can gather, brainstorm, meet clients, build trust, and create a shared sense of momentum.
The challenge is that the office has to be easier to manage than it used to be. Companies do not want outdated leases, scattered vendors, manual spreadsheets, and constant admin work. They want offices that feel flexible, useful, and simple to operate.
That is the space Christelle Rohaut is building in with Codi. Her work stands out because it connects several important trends at once: hybrid work, AI automation, commercial real estate, facilities management, and workplace experience.
By building Codi into an AI-powered office management platform, Christelle Rohaut is showing that smarter offices are not only about sleek design or better desks. They are about the invisible systems that keep a workplace running smoothly.
For modern companies, that may be the real breakthrough. A smarter office is not just a place people go. It is a workplace that supports the team without constantly pulling time and attention away from the work that matters.
