Original|Odaily Planet Daily(@OdailyChina)
Author|Wenser(@wenser 2010 )
A new form of 'hard currency' has recently emerged in the Korean matchmaking market—SK Hynix employees.
Kang Eun-seon, a director at the Korean matchmaking agency Gayeon, frankly stated: "In the past, we would match SK Hynix employees with partners roughly around a B+ level, but now it's unconditionally an A level." One anonymous Hynix employee even said: "On blind dates, we usually pretend we work at Samsung Electronics first; we only confess we're actually at Hynix when we meet someone with good character."
The hierarchy in the Korean and even global dating market has quietly been rewritten.
If the most sought-after matches used to be 'Samsung employees', finance guys, and civil servants, then with the AI bull market sweeping the globe, the people truly being revalued by the market have become:
NVIDIA employees;
SK Hynix engineers;
OpenAI and Anthropic researchers;
AI team members at DeepSeek and ByteDance.
The primary market revalues companies, the secondary market revalues stocks, and now the market has begun to revalue 'blind date men'.
In view of this, Odaily Planet Daily will compile a "Most Sought-After Single Men in the AI Era Ranking List," for your reference during tea breaks, based on multiple dimensions such as company valuation, employee income, industry status, and wealth potential.
Off the Charts Hot: NVIDIA & SK Hynix
If there's a "T0 tier" in the current dating market, it almost indisputably belongs to NVIDIA and SK Hynix.
The former is the biggest "money printing machine" in the AI world.
With the sustained explosive demand for AI computing power, NVIDIA has become one of the biggest beneficiaries of the global AI wave. After the US stock market opened yesterday, Nvidia's stock price hit another all-time high; meanwhile, Wells Fargo once again raised its target price, maintaining an "Overweight" rating.
A consensus is gradually forming in the capital markets: in today's era, GPUs are no longer just chips; they are the "oil" of the AI world.
On the other side, what has collectively driven the Korean dating market wild is the nearly absurd scale of bonuses for SK Hynix employees.
Last year, SK Hynix revised its "Performance Sharing (PS)" system, stipulating that 10% of operating profit would go directly into the bonus pool, while also removing the bonus cap.
The result is:
With the explosive demand for HBM (High Bandwidth Memory), Hynix employees' bonuses have entered the "hundreds of millions of won era."
Last year, SK Hynix changed the distribution method for its "Performance Sharing (PS)," stipulating that 10% of operating profit would be allocated to the bonus pool while removing the cap relative to annual salary.
For fiscal year 2025, the company's operating profit reached 47.2 trillion won. Calculated at 10%, the more than 30,000 Hynix employees could each receive an average bonus of 140 million won (approximately RMB 650,000).
In the first quarter of this year, the average per-employee bonus was already as high as 107 million won, about RMB 500,000. Furthermore, according to further predictions by the international investment bank Macquarie Securities, SK Hynix's operating profit is expected to surge to 447 trillion won by 2027, with per-employee bonuses reaching 1.29 billion won, approximately RMB 6.1 million.
With such hefty rewards, Hynix employees are not only extremely sought after in the dating market but are even seriously considering "internal pairing."
One anonymous employee stated: "Recently, unmarried employees are paying significantly more attention to each other. After all, the economic synergy of marrying a colleague is too great; office romance is now seriously considered a strategic option."
When bonuses start being calculated in "hundreds of millions of won," 'office romance' suddenly transforms from HR's biggest headache into an act of family asset allocation. Even due to the high correlation between performance bonuses and attendance time, many employees have started actively avoiding parental leave. Some workplace couples even say: "With bonuses of hundreds of millions of won right in front of us, who can afford to take leave now?"
SK Hynix employees are no longer just engineers; they are more like AI concept stocks in the Korean dating market.
Therefore, NVIDIA, crowned as the "world's highest market capitalization company," and SK Hynix, the "bonus myth maker," are undisputedly placed in the first tier of this ranking list, with a rating of "Off the Charts Hot."
Clip from the Korean variety show SNL: "Hynix Workwear as a Pass to Luxury Stores"
Hot: Anthropic, OpenAI
If NVIDIA and Hynix represent AI infrastructure, then OpenAI and Anthropic represent the most sought-after "new money" of the AI era.
Over the past year, valuations of both companies have inflated crazily. Simultaneously, employee wealth has also entered a genuine "realization phase."
Last October, OpenAI completed a staggeringly large employee stock sale. According to The Wall Street Journal, over 600 current and former employees cashed out a total of $66 billion (approximately RMB 480 billion) in that round of transactions. About 75 people received the maximum amount, $30 million each. After completing a $122 billion funding round at an $852 billion valuation this year, OpenAI has recently further eased restrictions on employee stock sales. After closing a new funding round this April, OpenAI recently went a step further in relaxing employee stock sale limits.
The situation at Anthropic is similar.
This April, Anthropic again conducted an employee stock sale at a $350 billion valuation, but due to employees' obvious reluctance to sell, many investors failed to acquire their expected shares.
Unlike the stories of "paper options" from the previous internet era, this round of AI companies has genuinely started allowing employees to realize and pocket their "equity wealth."
In other words: the actual wealth levels of these AI company employees far surpass those of most big tech employees from the traditional internet era.
However, compared to stable cash flow printers like NVIDIA and Hynix, OpenAI and Anthropic resemble more "high-volatility, high-growth assets."
Therefore, we temporarily assign them a "Hot" rating.
Elite: Deepseek, ByteDance
One of the biggest changes in a bull market is that global internet companies have started to realize anew: the most expensive asset is no longer GPUs, but people, especially AI talent.
Last December, ByteDance was revealed to be planning a massive ramp-up in AI investment; this year, with the further upgrade of its AI strategy, the scale of its AI-related investments has reached a staggering RMB 200 billion level.
Simultaneously, ByteDance's valuation has continued to rise. According to the latest market news, ByteDance's current valuation has exceeded $600 billion, $50 billion higher than three months ago.
This April, it initiated a new round of employee stock buybacks, with the repurchase price for current employees raised to $229.5 per share, an appreciation of 14.52% from the previous price; the repurchase price for former employees is $201.96 per share, an appreciation of about 11.97% from the previous round, leading to another substantial increase in employees' paper wealth.
On the other side, DeepSeek is also launching its own "AI Talent Defense War."
With some core personnel gradually leaving, DeepSeek's Liang Wenfeng also needs to use equity to retain his core team.
In May, market rumors first surfaced that DeepSeek was seeking financing at a $45 billion valuation; subsequently, news was officially announced that DeepSeek plans to seek RMB 50 billion in funding.
It's worth mentioning that, according to reports, of DeepSeek's RMB 50 billion funding quota, only RMB 30 billion will come from external financing, with Liang Wenfeng himself covering RMB 20 billion under the guise of internal fundraising. As the boss of quantitative fund Huafang, Liang undoubtedly has the means, and Huafang Fund's RMB 70 billion under management and 58.5% annualized return also give him ample confidence.
Clearly, while OpenAI and Anthropic use dollars to retain talent, Chinese AI companies are beginning to use RMB to fight their own AI talent war.
And in today's market, those who can secure a seat at the main AI table are themselves extremely scarce high-level players.
Therefore, whether it's ByteDance or DeepSeek, their employees deserve an "Elite" rating in the dating market.
NPC: Samsung, Tencent
If the aforementioned companies have already boarded the AI high-speed train, then Samsung Electronics and Tencent seem more like players still trying to find their "AI boarding pass."
First, Samsung.
For decades, being a "Samsung person" was almost one of the strongest professional auras in Korean society. But in the AI era, Samsung has unexpectedly become the one being re-examined by the market.
Due to missing the early layout of HBM, missteps in technical route selection, and product certification issues, Samsung has gradually been suppressed by Hynix in the AI memory competition.
Simultaneously, Samsung employees have also started "looking up to Hynix." Recently, the Samsung National Union even planned to launch a large-scale strike, hoping the company would increase the bonus ratio and remove the bonus cap mechanism. If these demands are not met, the Samsung Union will launch a large-scale strike lasting 18 days (starting May 21). JPMorgan estimates that this could cause KRW 4 trillion in losses and reduce production of DRAM and NAND chips.
It must be said, it's somewhat understandable why SK Hynix employees "pose" as Samsung employees in the dating market, as mentioned earlier.
Negotiations Break Down, Massive Samsung Strike Seems Inevitable
On the other side, Tencent isn't having an easy time either.
Compared to ByteDance's aggressive AI investment, Tencent appears more cautious. Previously, Tencent President Martin Lau stated that the company invested about RMB 18 billion in new AI products last year, and it will double this year; however, the gap with ByteDance's investment level of hundreds of billions of RMB remains significant.
Meanwhile, Tencent also faces slowing growth in its traditional businesses.
On May 13th, Tencent's Q1 2026 financial report was released, showing: Revenue of RMB 196.458 billion, a year-on-year increase of 9%; Non-IFRS operating profit of RMB 75.63 billion, a year-on-year increase of 9%. Overall, revenue and profit growth slowed to single-digit levels, with AI investment dragging down short-term gross margin; in gaming performance, revenue from the domestic market games was RMB 45.4 billion, a year-on-year increase of 6%, lagging behind the growth rate of domestic market game gross billings.
This is also a key reason why Tencent did not take the initiative in DeepSeek's recent financing round. Previously, media reports suggested Tencent proposed subscribing for up to 20% of DeepSeek's shares, but DeepSeek was unwilling to relinquish significant control.
And this is why the market is increasingly frequently discussing: Has Tencent actually obtained the real "boarding pass" for the AI era?
After all, what Tencent built back then was the most expensive "Noah's Ark" of the mobile internet era—WeChat; but the new boarding pass for the AI era, no one knows yet who will ultimately hold it.
Therefore, we temporarily assign a rating of "NPC" to employees of Samsung and Tencent.
Done For: Traditional Finance Guys, Crypto Bros
Finally, compared to the employees of the AI giants above, traditional finance guys and crypto bros are gradually losing the era's红利.
The reason is quite simple: the most sought-after profession of an era often represents the core wealth distribution rights of that era.
For the past few decades: the financial industry represented capital, the internet industry represented traffic; the crypto circle represented overnight wealth.
But AI has long begun redefining everything.
Compared to AI giant teams with bonuses in the millions and stock cash-outs in the billions of dollars, traditional finance guys and crypto bros suddenly seem somewhat "out of sync with the times."
Especially against the backdrop of the US stock market's continued AI-driven focus, the structural market in A-shares, and the loss of new wealth effects in the crypto circle, the halos of "financial elites" and "crypto gurus" have faded.
Based on the current dating market trends and parental judgment standards, the above two groups can only receive a "Done For" rating in the dating market.
Representative Profile Picture of a Traditional Finance Guy
Current State of Crypto Bros
Do you think such ratings are reasonable? Do you have other rating references? Please leave your opinions and views in the comments.
Attached is the ranking generator (from Hot to Done For): https://tool.dayun.cool/ranking
