This AI startup pays $1.7M a year in rent so staff will work 72-hour weeks

Rilla, an AI startup making sales coaching software, spends $1.7 million annually on housing stipends for employees to live near its New York office, requiring a 72-hour work week. CEO Sebastian Jimenez says the perks, including meals and a gym, are designed to maximize focus and flow, not comfort. The policy reflects a broader trend in tech startups demanding intense work hours from a small core of elite staff.

Tech loves a perk, but few go this far. Rilla, an AI startup that makes coaching software for sales teams, spends about $1.7m a year on housing stipends so staff can live near its New York office, Fortune https://fortune.com/2026/07/08/rilla-ceo-sebastian-jimenez-pays-1-7-million-year-employees-live-in-one-of-americas-expensive-neighborhoods/ reports. The trade-off is a 72-hour week. Employees who live within a 10-minute bike ride of the Williamsburg office get an $18,000 annual housing stipend. About 80% take it. That helps in a neighbourhood where a studio rents for around $4,000 a month. Flow, not comfort Chief executive Sebastian Jimenez frames the spending as focus, not indulgence. “We’re not trying to coddle people,” he told Business Insider https://www.businessinsider.com/rilla-ai-startup-pay-employee-stipend-live-close-to-work-2026-7 . “A lot of companies offer perks that end up distracting employees. We ask ourselves, ‘Can this help someone get into the flow?'” That logic runs through the rest of the package. Rilla pays for three meals a day and is building a gym with a sauna and cold plunge. It even hired a Harvard healthy-buildings expert to pick an office with ventilation that aids concentration. The maths of a 72-hour week The bill runs steep for a small firm. Rilla spends roughly $37,000 per employee a year on these extras, near $4.4m across about 120 staff, and it signed a 10-year lease. Jimenez says the return justifies it, and claims each engineer generates $4m to $5m in revenue a year. Staff work 12 hours a day, six days a week, and he says he hires people, from Division I athletes to founders, who want that. It fits a wider hardening of work culture in tech. As the industry argues over whether AI adds or cuts jobs https://thenextweb.com/news/ai-jobs-narrative-flip-bezos-altman-ceos , some startups lean the other way. They hire a small core of elite staff https://thenextweb.com/news/ai-native-startups-entry-level-hiring and ask them for marathon days https://thenextweb.com/news/openai-first-intern-cohort-ai-native-engineer . Rivals sell softer versions of the same idea, from JPMorgan’s tennis courts to Goldman’s cycling studios. Why it matters The stipend reads as generous, and as a lever. Cut the commute, remove the friction, and the workday stretches. Critics of the always-on office, including voices warning against cutting the junior tier https://thenextweb.com/news/daniel-dines-not-hiring-juniors-mistake-raise-uipath or chasing raw output https://thenextweb.com/news/ai-workslop-knowledge-decay-harvard-business-review-productivity , would call it a gilded cage. Jimenez sees it differently. “Our goal isn’t simply to get people into the office,” he said. “It’s to build an environment where they can do the best work of their lives.” Get the TNW newsletter Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.