In 2024, Meida Marek (her online pseudonym), was a recent college graduate working an entry-level finance job when she started doing the mental math that’s fast becoming a rite of passage in such industries: What happens when AI can do this better than I can?So Marek took inventory. She was intelligent and naturally supportive. She was good at talking to people. She likes futurist rabbit holes: AI, biohacking, cryptocurrency, the sort of topics that can turn dinner into a three-hour debate.So she decided to turn that toolkit into a new career—and became an escort.For Marek, it’s sex work with a particular angle: high-end companionship for Silicon Valley’s most online, most technical clients—often the kind who work in AI or around it. Lately, she’s been getting a lot of clients from Nvidia.There are only a handful of women like Marek. And like their clientele, they are also killing it financially. “I would call it a ‘nerd-first’ approach,” says Aella, an internet-famous sex worker who became a sensation on X for applying a data science perspective to her own love life. These days she spends more time on AI safety advocacy work—an AI doom bootcamp for creators called Plz Don’t Kill Us—but she still talks about the demand she saw up close: men who want the hot, smart girl to also take their ideas seriously.These escorts’ nerd literacy is baked into their marketing materials. All have active X accounts where they post provocative selfies, mixed with commentary on topics like AI and longevity. Marek’s booking portal is built like a text-based role-playing game where users must complete interactive prompts. On Talia Sable’s site, she markets herself as “a huge nerd,” and notes that she is an ex-programmer interested in Dungeons and Dragons, AI and supply chains. Sable charges $3,000 an hour.Ada Hopper“Posting about AI works,” says Ada Hopper (also an online pseudonym), who used to go by the descriptor “Autistic Courtesan” on X. “You'll have random Nvidia bros who are like, ‘What? You know what a GPU is? Oh my God, wow.’”If you want to understand the economics, just look at the menu. On Tryst, a directory for escorts, $1,000 an hour is already high. Marek charges $3,500. She has no problem getting it, and her rate has almost doubled since the beginning of the year. Currently, she says she’s booked out for the next few months, and is getting so many inquiries that she’s considered raising rates again. “I recall at least one girl describing herself as a ’Claude Widow’... She’s lost her husband to AI stress.”