Author: Curry, Deep Tide TechFlow

AI has really brought many things down to rock-bottom prices over the past two years. Writing code, designing, and video editing have all become a matter of typing a few words in an input box.

But in San Francisco, where AI is creating wealth at an astonishing rate, there is a type of service whose price is moving in the opposite direction, quietly rising, not recorded in any price statistics.

According to Forbes' cover story on June 7, a woman using the alias Meida Marek was just a low-level employee in the finance industry a few years ago. According to her own statement to Forbes, the turning point in her career was when she started contemplating that AI would eventually impact her job.

After much thought, she decided not to wait any longer and turned around to earn money from those involved in AI. Now she charges $3,500 per hour and is booked several months in advance.

What she does is, simply put, high-end companionship. A complete girlfriend experience, dating, chatting, accompanying at events… The price list is posted on her own website, transparently priced, and honest.

This business itself is not new at all; what is fresh is the price.

According to professionals interviewed by Forbes, five years ago it was rare to find anyone charging over $1,000 per hour in this circle. Now, $1,000 is no longer found on the price lists of top players, with $3,000 just being the starting rate, and that requires waiting in line.

This salary increase would be worthy of a meeting at the Federal Reserve in any respectable industry.

NVIDIA's stock has made countless millionaires, and the cashing out by employees at AI companies could equal ten years of effort for others; these stories have been heard over the past two years. But once the money is in their hands, where it flows to has not been closely examined.

This Forbes report essentially unveils one of the waterways in this flow, and those on this waterway are earning more than most entrepreneurial companies riding on the AI concept.

Who are these people that can fill a schedule at $3,500 an hour for months?

No Dating Until Series B

In Silicon Valley, a self-deprecating phrase has gained popularity in the past two years: Single until Series B—stay single until after the Series B financing.

According to Forbes, this phrase originated as a joke in the founder community, but has since spread widely and is now printed on T-shirts and hats.

Jokes tend to become popular because they contain a grain of truth. In this logic, dating is something that can be postponed, taking a back seat to product development, financing, and hiring, to be considered when a company reaches a certain milestone.

Friends from major domestic companies likely don't need a translation for this state.

Meanwhile, those putting off dating are seeing their money grow at an unprecedented rate. Last October, OpenAI conducted a round of employee stock sales; according to American media such as Business Insider, over 600 people participated, each cashing out an average of around $11 million. Similar wealth-building stories have occurred repeatedly in the Bay Area over the past two years.

With lots of money and little time, social needs are compressed into the gaps of their schedules.

For this group, dating apps are just another low-yield optimization problem, with matching, chit-chatting, scheduling, and being stood up creating friction costs at every step. Even more troubling is that even if they do set up a date, the person they meet is unlikely to engage in discussions about what truly interests them.

Thus, the market offers a solution: pay directly to buy certainty.

On another professional's price list reported by Forbes, a full day is $23,000, and a weekend costs $30,000. At this price, there is still a waitlist.

For someone who just cashed out millions, this calculation isn’t hard; the difficult part is scheduling a date.

Forbes also mentioned an unexpectedly logical detail: a significant number of clients purchasing high-end companionship services primarily seek---conversation.

Talking about technology, discussing the future, going on until the early hours, certain unspeakable topics almost serve as embellishments. Among these clients, some spend their days teaching AI how to talk and pay to hear a real person talk when they finish work.

This detail actually rewrites the pricing logic of the entire business.

If the main service provided is conversation, a new variable is added to the pricing: what you can talk about and how deeply you can delve into it.

The market for beauty and appearance has been generally quantified over centuries, but the value of conversation has never been set.

So what type of conversation is most valuable in San Francisco?

Smart Premium

Among the professionals interviewed by Forbes, someone already stated the answer: "The highest charging is never the most beautiful girl, but those who are both beautiful and smart."

As for how to monetize their intelligence, they have developed a complete strategy.

The main battleground for acquiring clients is on X, where they regularly post AI-related content, industry trends, and technical opinions. One professional explained the workings of this funnel to Forbes:

"There will always be guys from NVIDIA popping up saying, what, you actually know what a GPU is? Oh my gosh." And then, the business flows in.

Other industries refer to this as content marketing. The targeting is precise, the conversion rate is high, and the customer acquisition cost is effectively zero—this is data that growth teams at many startups dream about.

Moreover, what’s being discussed at the dinner table is indeed technology, not just superficial conversation. Forbes noted that among the gifts clients send, there are AI-generated artworks and hardware specifically designed for them to run open-source models at home...

Sending flowers and bags is so last era; today’s Silicon Valley nouveau riche express their feelings by gifting computing power.

These gifts represent a micro detail. That a client sends hardware to run open-source models indicates that the topics discussed in this paid relationship are what they are genuinely passionate about and have no outlet for in their daily life.

This leads to the real crux of this business.

The wealth of these AI nouveau riche clients is a bonus in the dating market, but their interests can be a detriment. Discussing models, graphics cards, and longevity research with a typical date will leave them losing interest within three minutes... they have to translate themselves into a normal person to get through a meal.

Over time, "not having to translate oneself" becomes something that even wealth cannot buy.

The reason this demand can become so exorbitant lies in the supply side. In the dating market, beautiful people are never in short supply, and beauty that is transparently priced is also not scarce. What is lacking is beauty that can engage with discussions about large models and technological topics; the supply of this category is nearly zero.

Premium never rewards effort; it only rewards scarcity.

Thus, the companionship business has an abnormal structure. Normal knowledge payment involves students paying to hear teachers lecture, while here it is reversed—the most technically savvy person pays, buying a student who can understand their lecture.

This strategy has been named "nerd priority" by professionals in the Forbes report. First, it’s about being similar, then it’s about business.

The aforementioned Meida, who transitioned from finance, uses this strategy as a live case study on her social media account.

When you open her homepage, there aren’t many selfies; instead, her timeline features various questions and polls. On May 1 of this year, she asked her followers whether they would prefer aliens to be AI or biological. The two options she provided were "silicon-based life" and "carbon-based."

Her fans voted in favor of carbon-based. Her techie clients are likely also using their wallets to cast a vote for someone with mutual interests.

Silicon Prices Fall, Carbon Prices Rise

Companionship is a lasting business about human nature.

And we all know the price on the silicon side. AI companion apps like Replika have subscription fees of around $20 a month, available around the clock, always ready for conversation, chatting in accordance with your cues. Big models are still in a price war, and this number will only drop further in the future.

On the carbon side, the high-end companionship mentioned in this article has a ceiling hourly rate of $6,000. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in just one hour, this approaches the monthly income of an average American household. Even at this price, there’s still a waitlist.

In an original interview with Forbes, a companionship professional with a master’s degree broke through this layer, stating that AI is turning real human connections into a luxury.

This statement sounded particularly credible coming from her, because her clients are precisely the world’s best at understanding AI. Insiders see shortages first, and insiders hoard stocks first.

This logic has already played out once in the capital market this year.

In February, a term called HALO became popular in U.S. stock markets, referring to heavy asset, low-elimination-risk companies, specifically pointing to those AI companies that can survive any evolution. Money flowed out of software stocks into McDonald's and Walmart.

The companionship business is the beauty version of the same logic and doesn’t require financial reports.

The last time San Francisco saw this scenario was in 1849. Gold rushers from all over the world poured in; later the mines were depleted, and people dispersed. On the list of winners left behind by that wave of prosperity, few were actual gold miners, but one who catered to the miners’ needs by making pants, named Levi Strauss.

Each cycle of wealth creates a new appraisal of nearby things; this time, people themselves may be the ones getting revalued.

The story of AI is not over, and the gold in the tech industry is still emerging. But one thing is certain: every time silicon gets cheaper by a penny, carbon gets more expensive by a penny.