New York-based fertility doctor Dr Brian Levine wasn’t fazed when one client, a successful woman in her 40s, requested a novel approach to?her IVF procedure. She asked him to find her?sperm from three different donors and fertilise eggs in three standalone procedures. “Whoever made the best embryos, she’d use the?cohort from them,” Dr Levine explains of her rationale. “People are so obsessed with the quality of sperm that they’ll buy vials from multiple donors to figure out that best embryo performance.”?

The experiment cost her around $100,000 and, indeed, one cluster produced far more embryos than the others. But there was more than competitiveness or paranoia behind the measure. “She felt like sperm was so rare, so?scarce, that she had to do that.”

Demand for sperm, and American sperm in particular,?is far outstripping supply. As the buyer’s market?has increased globally, American sperm has become?one of the hottest commodities in a straitened market. Its regulations mandate rigorous testing of sperm?for communicable diseases. There is also greater variety. And there is no limit on how many families one man can give to (in the UK, it’s capped at 10 per donor), allowing more regular donations. America also permits sperm donors to be compensated for their contributions – in the UK, per the NHS, it is illegal to?pay donors other?than for their time and expenses. In the?States, “you?can just pay for what you want”, says Arthur Caplan,?a?professor at NYU and head of medical ethics at?the?Grossman School.

Accordingly, American sperm has become one of the country’s priciest resources. By weight, super-premium semen ($4,000 or more for a gram) now costs more than?Beluga caviar (up to $3 a gram for roe), which represents a tenfold rise in price over the past decade. It’s?part of an expanding area of business: the global sperm?bank market was valued at $5bn in 2022, per Grandview Research, and is expected to grow at an annual?rate?of 3.56 per cent to 2030.?

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Such high prices are transforming the landscape of?high-end fertility. Where traditionally sperm was treated?as?an easily obtained (and produced) commodity, purchased from large banks like California Cryobank, founded in 1977 and still one of the biggest in the world,?now new elite services and startups are trying to?capitalise on and disrupt the market for top-tier raw materials. Online databases will offer everything from staples like height and eye or hair colour (as well as if?it’s straight or curly) to hobbies and personal statements (“I pride myself on being a good friend”), all?while giving those donors Marvel hero-style shorthands. Take your pick between “Happy Hockey Yogi”, “Marathon Man” and “A Scholar and a B-Baller”.?

“If you want Robert Redford’s looks, but Einstein’s brain, it’s going to be tough – those are the people that?command higher prices,” says Dr Rafat Abbasi, a?fertility specialist based in Washington, DC. At the very?top of the market, “a sperm donor could command up?to $20,000” for their participation.

Competition is intense because the pipeline can’t keep up. In the US, “the regulatory milieu has become so restrictive that it’s created a bottleneck of supply”, says Dr Levine. There are also controls around medical onanism in the States: several days of celibacy are recommended before donation, plus no?alcohol or drugs. Volunteers are encouraged to return every two to three days for repeated donations. Such strictures discourage the desirable donors that picky clients are keenest to score, Levine adds. “We’re using couch potatoes, because what young Goldman Sachs analyst or Harvard law student has the time to go to the clinic before it closes at 5pm?”

Another reason that the Goldman Sachs staffer is unlikely to see the economic upside? The surge in value hasn’t yet been passed on to the donors. Vials of sperm, each of which works for one round of embryo fertilisation, typically sell for between $1,000 and $2,500 (though can easily cost far more). How much does a man receive each time he liquidates his inventory? Around $50 to $150.

The rise of commercial DNA-tracking services like?23andMe has also stiffened the resolve of many, as?Caplan?explains. Whatever paperwork might insist,?it’s?difficult to guarantee that a man would remain untraceable, and while anonymous donation is legal in most of the US,?in 2024 Colorado became the first state to?ban anonymous donation (in the UK and many other European countries anonymous sperm donation is more restricted). “The loss of anonymity due to genetic tracing technology, and that shift in the legal climate away from ‘a(chǎn)nonymity first’, means men have backed away from voluntary?donation,” Caplan continues.

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The inevitable outcome? An increasing dearth of donors. “It bothers me that in a country of 340 million people, we only?have about 1,200 sperm donors,” says Levine.

A?few startups hope to address the issues around this?unlikely luxury market. Via the Donor Reserve programme from California Cryobank, for $70,000 you can buy into its Platinum Reserve tier. This touts exclusivity on a single donor’s DNA and offers sperm from what it claims is a “select collection”; at time of writing, there were?three such offers, including donor #16860, described as the “smartest guy in the room”, the product of?a surgeon mother and artist father, and #16591, who’s not only a weightlifting secret agent, but who?also describes?himself as “a trustworthy hero”, who “grabbed his?brother’s ankle to slow him down” when his scuba tanks failed on a dive together. ?

Other challengers in the?industry hope to tap undiscovered reserves. Khaled Kteily, founder of challenger sperm bank Legacy and a one-time management consultant, started his own sperm-freezing service after spilling scalding hot coffee in his lap, and?learning how it could have affected his fertility (he had no long-lasting issues). At?Legacy, he?encourages men to freeze their?sperm?at their?sexual peak, after it is tested for any issues (semen analysis costs $295 and?storage between $100 and $145 per?year). The 36-year-old doesn’t yet have children of?his own, but has more than 100 vials on ice all ready. “My plan is to use the best sample, with the best quality, a?bit like embryo selection,” he says.

Crucially, he’s now exploring offering Legacy’s 30,000 existing sperm-freezing clients, in which are included more than one third of Fortune 100 CEOs, and 35 per cent of whom have a masters degree or higher, the option to become?donors. “It’s not?a trivial thing to help bring a baby into this world, but we’re now at a?point where sperm is in?such short supply, and it’s?such?a valuable commodity, we’re exploring whether they?would be interested in selling,” he says. These?donors would also be verified. Some conventional sperm banks allow?donors to self-report their resumés – exaggerating as?much as they dare – while every aspect of Legacy’s clients’ lives can be checked.

Others hope to upend the market by disrupting the anonymity model. Danielle Winston and her wife co-founded Washington DC-based The Seed Scout two and a?half years ago after experiencing sperm-market issues at first hand. The former lawyer has developed a model based?on “known donation”, which means that donor and recipient will engage directly and get to know each other, averting the issues of deceptive descriptions. With The Seed Scout, donors can create children with no more than three families and sign a contract precluding them from donating to other sperm banks, which prevents donors creating more children than they could know and, if desired, makes it easier for children to have a relationship with their donor. Of the $16,000 to $17,000 levied by The Seed Scout for the process, donors receive $5,000 per family (the business cut is $4,500, with the rest covering medical overheads). They now have 580 men on the books,?ranging in age from 24 to 43.?

Levine is increasingly working more closely with banks like Winston’s, as he sees them as a better option for finding good donors and creating happier recipients. And the joy of a successful procedure is hard to beat. He has another patient, a single mother by choice, who also shopped for top-tier sperm. Her first baby from that batch was a girl, and she just gave birth to a boy a few weeks ago.?