The $500,000 matchmaker, and the 99p alternative.

The fee

Half a million dollars for an introduction

Somewhere in Silicon Valley right now, a very rich person is paying $500,000 to be introduced to another human being.

That's not a joke, and it's not really a story about rich people being silly with money. Bloomberg reported this week that AI companies are driving a surge of new clients to the Valley's matchmakers (Georgie McKay, The AI Boom Is Creating a New Market for $500,000 Matchmakers, Bloomberg, 15 October 2026; paywalled).

Linx Dating's fees now start at $75,000 and climb past half a million for the VIP tier. Across the wider matchmaking market the range runs from around $4,900 at Tawkify to $100,000 at Three Day Rule for a sixteen-month programme, and upward from there.

The question

What else is there

The quote in the piece that stopped us was from Three Day Rule's Erika Kaplan, on how the question from clients has changed. It used to be: which app should I be on? Now it's:

The apps aren't working for me. What else is there?

That's the whole crisis in one line, and it's coming from people who can afford almost anything else.

The market

Going around the apps

It tracks with where the apps themselves are. Bumble is reportedly being taken private by Ithaca Holdings at around $1.3bn, a fraction of the value it carried after its 2021 listing (also per Bloomberg's reporting).

The market that was meant to have solved this is shrinking, and the people with the most money to spend are going around it, back to the oldest method there is: someone who knows people, introducing two of them, in person.

The job

Attention, judgement and a room with no swiping in it

Here's our view: that isn't a luxury good. It's what dating always was before the apps convinced everyone that scale was the same thing as quality.

A matchmaker charging $500,000 isn't selling magic. She's selling attention, judgement and a room with no swiping in it.

The algorithm was supposed to be the scale version of a good matchmaker. It turned out to be the opposite of one.

The coaching advice in the piece was the other detail worth keeping. Blaine Anderson, a dating coach in Austin, tells her clients they need “practice talking to people without every conversation carrying the pressure of a romantic outcome.” Which is, incidentally, most of what's wrong with a bad singles night too. Everyone is performing a first date instead of having a conversation.

Your vote

Name your price

Before you read what ours is: if someone who actually knew you could introduce you to one person worth meeting, what would that be worth to you?

The bet

The human part of the job

We're not in the business of sneering at the matchmakers. They've proven the market exists and that people will pay serious money to have it solved properly.

Our bet, for what it's worth, is that you don't need half a million dollars to do the human part of that job. You need a room designed so people stop auditioning and start talking, and a format that does the work an algorithm can't.

We think that can cost 99p and still do something of what Linx Dating is doing for its VIP clients. Time, and a first evening, will tell us if we're right.