ChatGPT just received a huge upgrade that will make the users accessing the AI chatbot so much easier and more comfortable. The domain name or the website AI.com now forwards to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The name of this domain was acquired in 2021 but it resolve into an actual website just last week. According to the reports Gabriel, a prominent domain broker was the one involved with what was at the time the record-breaking sale of the Sex.com domain for $13 million in 2010.
Gabriel said he could not outright confirm who the buyer of AI.com was due to the terms of the sale, but the conversation left little room for interpretation. Alternative explanations, such as that someone did OpenAI a massive, multimillion-dollar favor, strain plausibility. OpenAI was asked to confirm it was the buyer of the domain, but the company has not given any answers yet.
Gabriel told Mashable, “It obviously becomes public information when you go to it.” The broker also said that a domain like AI.com would go for over $10 million in today’s market as the final selling price. Prior to the acquisition, AI.com was listed at a public asking price of $11 million. The domain name received regular offers since Gabriel started brokering the domain.
“Every week, someone was offering a hundred grand, two hundred grand, a million bucks,” he says.
Amazon was one of the interested buyers of the domain. According to the broker, he believes that the interest of Amazon in buying the domain was in using the domain for its upcoming Amazon Internet product, more so than for an artificial intelligence-based one. However, the e-commerce giant ultimately passed on buying the domain. Companies like Nvidia and Intel who are invested in AI showed no interest in buying the domain when approached.
“It’s interesting when you sell names like these and go to the industry leaders,” Gabriel said. “A lot of the time, they don’t want them or are unwilling to pay larger price tags. And it’s usually the smaller, less established company that doesn’t have the household name or brand yet that needs to make a splash or do something to make them more memorable to create that perception of industry leadership.”
“Now, I don’t know if [the buyer] really needed it,” he continued. “But it’ll pretty much solidify that product as the leader. It has done it in a matter of weeks or months, right? This kind of buzz and use would take some companies 10 or 20 years to get to.”
DomainInvesting, a domain trade outlet first reported on the sale of AI.com after noticing the domain was being transferred in September 2021. Gabriel said that a domain investment firm, Future Media Architects, which holds tens of thousands of domain names in its portfolio, had owned AI.com for 15 years prior to the sale. After the acquisition of AI.com was complete, the domain was left unused for all this time. Some social media users started to notice that AI.com was forwarding to ChatGPT on Feb. 15, 2023.
ChatGPT from OpenAI first opened to the public in November 2022 and quickly became the face of the exploding AI trend in the tech world. ChatGPT racked up a user base of over 100 million users in just two months, becoming the fastest-growing app of all time.
