The world’s most valuable AI startup purchased the domain from Dharmesh Shah, founder and CTO of HubSpot, with it now redirecting users to ChatGPT.
The purchase occurred earlier in the year, with the buyer shrouded in mystery, until this week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made a brief post on X that read: Chat.com.
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In response to Altman’s tweet, Shah revealed he had initially purchased the domain for a project and described ChatGPT as the “perfect home” for the domain.
Shah said he had purchased the domain for $15.5 million. While he didn’t disclose the amount he sold it for, he shrewdly revealed in an X post that when he does sell a domain “it's seldom at a loss.”
A purchase of the domain can be seen in ICANN’s WHOIS tool, which indicates that the ownership of Chat.com is "pending transfer," meaning it has been transferred to a new party.
OpenAI is no stranger to spending millions on domains, having purchased the AI.com domain from Google in February 2023.
No official figure for how much OpenAI paid for the domain was disclosed. However, speculation online pointed to a sum of $11 million.
Google had owned AI.com since the mid-1990s, but OpenAI is believed to have paid more than $10 million to purchase the domain.
There was a brief moment when AI.com sent users to a webpage announcing xAI, the Elon Musk-owned rival to OpenAI, leading many to believe he had purchased the domain.
The ownership of the AI.com domain then got murkier, with another apparent purchase sent users to a video on AI video generation owned by YouTuber Marques Brownlee, also known as MKBHD.
From the time of writing, however, both AI.com and now Chat.com direct users to ChatGPT.
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