AI.com went live during Super Bowl LX on Sunday, following one of the most expensive domain name acquisitions in internet history—a $70 million purchase by Kris Marszalek, co-founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com, as reported by the Financial Times.
The high-profile debut was overshadowed by service outages and uncertainty over what the AI platform actually offered users who were piqued by the high-profile TV ad.
The domain name AI.com was first registered in 1993, but it ultimately passed through multiple hands and tech cycles, including the dot-com boom and bust, before reemerging during the current AI surge.
Crypto.com built its profile through large branding deals, including a $700 million deal in 2021 to rename Los Angeles’ Staples Center as Crypto.com Arena. The AI.com purchase marks the second high-profile domain acquisition for Marszalek following his $10 million purchase of the Crypto.com domain from noted cryptographer Matt Blaze in 2018.
“Last year, an opportunity came up to acquire the AI.com domain, and we thought about the long-term view of this, 10-to-20 years from now, that AI is going to be one of the greatest technological waves of our lifetime,†an AI.com spokesperson told Decrypt. “There’s great value in owning the touchpoint of this space, and there are also good business reasons to own two domains that stand for their respective categories.â€