Did OpenAI just spend over $10 million on a URL?

On Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted a simple URL on X: chat.com. It is automatically redirected to the popular OpenAI ChatGPT chatbot.

Previously, the domain was owned by Dharmesh Shah, founder and CTO of HubSpot. In early 2023, Shah purchased the Chat.com domain for $10 million. However, just a few months later he announced that he sold the domainalthough he would not reveal details of the sale or the buyer. Notably, he confirmed that he sold the domain for more than he originally paid for it.

“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 artificial intelligence,” Shah wrote in a LinkedIn post announcing the acquisition. briefly redirected to before he resold it. After sale, Domain name transfer marked that Shah mentioned that another buyer was interested in the purchase and suggested that he passed it on to them.

Although the full history of domain ownership remains unclear, the domain sales database NameBio Reports this Chat.com site sold for $15.5 million on March 28, 2023. This timing coincides with Shah’s LinkedIn post dated May 25, 2023, announcing his sale after two months of ownership. OpenAI refused Edges request for comments; Shah did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication. TechCrunch reported that OpenAI has confirmed that it has acquired the domain.

The removal of GPT from the chat.com domain is part of OpenAI’s recent rebranding efforts. In September, the company announced a new series of reasoning models starting with “o1.” Then former chief scientist Bob McGrew said Edge he hoped that the o1 series would be “the first step towards new, smarter names” that would better communicate the company’s work. However, as TechCrunch reports, the company is not hosting ChatGPT on chat.comso this most likely does not mean an official name change.

People hoarding “vanity domains” is a story as old as the Internet itself. Just a few months ago, AI startup Friend spent $1.8 million on Friend.com after raising $2.5 million in funding. For OpenAI, more than $10 million is a drop in the ocean: the startup just raised $6.6 billion.