A TXT record, as the abbreviation indicates, is a record, that keeps info in human-readable form and not code. It can be set up for a domain name or a subdomain for a variety of purposes. Search engines, for instance, have different ways of making sure you're the owner of a certain domain and one of them is actually by creating a TXT record with specific text that they provide and which you need to use as the record value. The same verification method is used by some analytics platforms that keep track of the traffic to your web sites as well. Needless to say, in such a case the content of the record is going to be read by a robot, but it'll still be in human-readable form. A TXT record is also employed if you enable the so-called SPF protection for your emails in order to prevent them from being forged. In this case, the record contains information showing that a given electronic message is sent from a trusted and authorized mail server. You can use a TXT record for any type of other information also, such as your company details, for instance.
