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The gift of gab

ChatGPT has a new vanity domain name, and it may have cost $15 million

Speculator swapped pricey domain for OpenAI shares instead of taking cash payment.

Benj Edwards – | 54
An OpenAI logo over a green background.
Credit: OpenAI / Benj Edwards
Credit: OpenAI / Benj Edwards
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On Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman merely tweeted "chat.com," announcing that the company had acquired the short domain name, which now points to the company's ChatGPT AI assistant when visited in a web browser. As of Thursday morning, "chatgpt.com" still hosts the chatbot, with the new domain serving as a redirect.

The new domain name comes with an interesting backstory that reveals a multimillion-dollar transaction. HubSpot founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah purchased chat.com for $15.5 million in early 2023, The Verge reports. Shah sold the domain to OpenAI for an undisclosed amount, though he confirmed on X that he "doesn't like profiting off of people he considers friends" and that he received payment in company shares by revealing he is "now an investor in OpenAI."

As The Verge's Kylie Robison points out, Shah originally bought the domain to promote conversational interfaces. "The reason I bought chat.com is simple: I think Chat-based UX (#ChatUX) is the next big thing in software. Communicating with computers/software through a natural language interface is much more intuitive. This is made possible by Generative A.I.," Shah wrote in a LinkedIn post during his brief ownership.

While it's possible that OpenAI handed over around $15 million of stock for the new domain, a multimillion-dollar purchase is a drop in the bucket for an AI company that raised $6.6 billion. The purchase represents a tiny fraction of its available capital.

Still, the undisclosed outlay on the domain name quickly became the butt of jokes on social media.

In February of this year, Altman made the news for reportedly being in talks to raise an astounding $7 trillion for AI chip fabrication in various locations around the world. Sources told Ars at the time that Altman downplayed the amount as being exaggerated, but it became a running joke in the AI community over time, including from Altman himself.

"Now I understand what you needed the 7 trillion for," quipped AI developer Asara Near in a reply to Altman on X.

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Benj Edwards Senior AI Reporter
Benj Edwards is Ars Technica's Senior AI Reporter and founder of the site's dedicated AI beat in 2022. He's also a tech historian with almost two decades of experience. In his free time, he writes and records music, collects vintage computers, and enjoys nature. He lives in Raleigh, NC.
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accantant
accantant
I wonder how long the previous owner of chat.com had been squatting on that domain.

I was going to joke about them looking forward to buying bubble.com, but it currently redirects to .io, which is an app builder thingy that can integrate with OpenAI. Joke's on me, then.
Furthest back I've been able to find is 2009, when it was apparently owned by CNET: https://web.archive.org/web/20091128154631/http://who.is/whois/chat.com/

And they owned it as far back as 2001, when it was already redirecting to webware.cnet.com, which then redirects to download.com... https://web.archive.org/web/20010504070036/chat.com
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