My friend Lao Zhou quit his job last month.

I thought he would take a break, but a few days ago his location on social media was already in Shenzhen, accompanied by a picture of a mini computer with a strange logo, with the caption: “Optimized for OpenClaw, available for immediate shipment.”

I privately messaged him asking if he switched to hardware? He replied quickly: “Selling shovels.”

It is spring 2026, and the hottest three words in the tech circle are OpenClaw. An AI agent that claims to autonomously call tools and complete complex tasks, it has allowed countless people to see the fantasy of “making money while lying down.” But what's truly interesting is not the technology itself, but the hidden industrial chain that has grown around it—those who do not mine for gold, but only sell shovels, are transforming the anxiety of the entire industry into real money, one shovel at a time.

Hardware Business: The Mine Boss Changed Its Skin

If you take a tour around Dongguan now, you will discover a peculiar scene: the assembly lines that used to produce Bitcoin mining machines are now busy making “AI hosts” under different brands. The workers are the same people, the supply chain remains unchanged, only the logo on the casing has shifted from “mining machine” to “Claw PC.”

The logic behind this is absurdly simple: Although OpenClaw claims it can run on a regular computer, for the vast majority of people, the words “command line configuration” are enough to deter them. Thus, a complete hardware arbitrage chain was born—pre-installing the Linux system, configuring OpenClaw, and integrating common plugins, then telling customers: “Plug it in, turn it on, and it's ready to use.”

How much premium can such a service command? Lao Zhou did some calculations for me: a white-label mini computer costing around two thousand yuan, after labeling it as “AI exclusive,” sells for five to six thousand yuan regularly. If you add terms like “enterprise-level” or “custom optimization,” it easily goes over ten thousand.

The earliest players have made a fortune. One well-known case in the circle: a former mining machine owner transitioned to making “AI hosts” at the end of last year and shipped over two thousand units in three months. His exact words were: “When selling mining machines, customers ask daily when they will break even. When selling AI hosts, customers only ask if it works well.”

This is the premium of anxiety. Those mining for gold care about whether they can find gold, while those selling shovels only care about whether the shovels sell well.

API Transit: The Data Business Hidden in the Shadows

Hardware is just the business on the surface. The real undercurrent is API transit.

OpenClaw itself does not generate intelligence; it needs to call the APIs of large models. This means that every conversation and every task consumes tokens. For regular users, there are two major pain points in directly purchasing the official API: it is expensive and complicated—especially for those blocked overseas models.

Thus, middlemen have emerged.

Superficially, they are simply doing “proxy purchasing”: buying in bulk at low prices from official sources and then selling at a markup to end users, making a profit. But the underwater activities are far more complicated than that.

A friend working in this field told me the truth: “The real money isn’t in the price difference, it’s in something else.” He gave an example: You think it’s GPT-4 processing your tasks, but it might just be an open-source model running. Users spend high prices for a “brand name,” while the service providers deliver a “white label”; as long as the results aren’t too different, users can’t tell.

A more advanced approach is “data distillation.” The user requests that circulate through the transit station—especially complex tasks like programming and logical reasoning—are high-quality data by themselves. Collecting, organizing, and selling this data to model training companies can turn into deals worth millions.

“What you pay for is both a service fee and a data usage fee. It’s just that you don’t know about the latter.” He said this in a tone as calm as if he were commenting on the nice weather today.

There is also a more subtle value in the entry: intelligent routing. Some service providers don’t simply resell; they automatically allocate the optimal model based on task type—cheap ones for simple Q&A, expensive ones for complex programming. This sounds like it saves users money, but the deeper value is that they understand “when users need what capabilities.” This data is worth much more than just the flow of API transactions.

Monetizing Information Asymmetry: Turning “Knowing” into Money

If hardware and APIs are “selling shovels,” then there is another business of “teaching people how to dig.”

I know a post-95 individual who has been traveling nationwide since last year to deploy OpenClaw for small and medium enterprises. He doesn’t know how to code, but he knows how to properly install those open-source plugins, how to integrate with DingTalk and Feishu, and how to configure the simplest customer service workflows. With just this skill, he charges starting from eight thousand.

Who are his clients? They are e-commerce businesses, factory owners, franchise operators—who’ve heard OpenClaw is hot but can’t even spell the words “command line.” What they need is not technology, but the certainty of “I want to have it just like others.” This young man is not selling code but the antidote to anxiety.

An even more interesting case is from the United States. An entrepreneur named Adam has a product called RoofClaw, specifically sold to roofing contractors. He pre-installs everything on a MacBook—industry-specific skills, quoting systems, customer management software—and then sends it to customers for five thousand dollars. This business has already generated sales of 1.8 million dollars.

This case kept me thinking for a long time. Is he selling technology? No. He is selling a whole set of certainty: you don’t have to learn anything, just turn it on and it’s customized specifically for your industry. In an era of information overload, “not having to think” itself is a scarce commodity.

China is also getting into this direction. Meituan and JD.com have both launched remote deployment services, collaborating with various IT service providers to standardize the business of “going to your location to help install OpenClaw.” From individual contractors to large enterprises, it shows that there is indeed a market.

The Business of Human Nature Always Has Demand

I recently browsed a startup project aggregation platform, where projects tagged with OpenClaw have exceeded a hundred. Ranked by verifiable income, the top ones are almost all cloud hosting and one-click deployment—the purest “selling shovels” business.

But there is a detail worth pondering: many of these projects have already displayed “seeking acquisition” tags. They are quick to start and quick to sell. A friend who sells shovels put it plainly: “The window period is only a few weeks; make a wave of profit and leave. Once everyone learns to dig for themselves, shovels won’t sell well anymore.”

This reminds me of the California Gold Rush in 1849. Those who truly made a fortune were not the miners who toiled in the river, but those who sold shovels, sold jeans, and sold water. Levi Strauss became a legend by selling canvas pants, not because he struck gold but because he understood what gold miners needed.

Human nature has never changed. The fear of falling behind, the desire for shortcuts, the hope for someone to help resolve the unresolvable—these anxieties in 1849 and 2026 are fundamentally the same.

Whether it’s OpenClaw or the next hot technology, the waves are always changing names. But some people don’t rush into the waves; instead, they wait by the shore, holding a shovel in their hands.

They are not anxious. Because they know, as long as there are people who want to strike gold, shovels will always sell.

Source: https://www.qinglan.org/37270

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