OpenAI Spends Millions of Dollars on a URL

ChatGPT creator OpenAI paid $15 million for a single domain. The company’s CEO, Sam Altman, shared a link on X (formerly Twitter) to the domain chat.com, which now leads directly to ChatGPT.

HubSpot’s founder and CTO, Dharmesh Shah, previously owned the URL, which he purchased in early 2023. Shah called chat.com his “most expensive domain name transaction,” spending $15.5 million of his own money on the acquisition – without involving HubSpot. Interestingly, he never planned to use it to rebrand his company’s chatbot, ChatSpot.ai.

“The reason I bought chat.com is simple: I think Chat-based UX (ChatUX) is the next big thing in software,” Shah explained on LinkedIn. He added, “Chat.com is absolutely brilliant in terms of simplicity, shortness, and being totally *on point* and meeting the moment. Somebody (not me) will build a massively successful product/company on it.”

That “somebody” is now known to be the tech mastermind who started the AI frenzy, Sam Altman, who Shah has known “for over a decade since before OpenAI” and considers him a friend. Since Shah “doesn’t like profiting off people he considers friends,” he got compensated in OpenAI shares instead of cash for the four-letter URL. It seems he’s satisfied with the deal, hinting the high-profile domain sale resulted in him getting more than he had paid.

The chat.com acquisition aligns with OpenAI’s efforts to simplify its naming. In September, OpenAI announced a shift towards a more intuitive naming of its products, starting with its new “o1” model series. Former Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew suggested the change marked the “first step of newer, more sane names” as OpenAI strives to position itself as a leading force in the AI space.

OpenAI’s acquisition of chat.com also reflects a broader trend among AI companies splurging on “vanity domains” to make their products easier to remember, and access. Before OpenAI spent millions on chat.com, AI startup Friend bought friend.com for $1.8 million.

While $15+ million for a single domain name may seem like an unreasonably expensive purchase for a company that’s still struggling to reach profitability, it’s worth mentioning that OpenAI collected $6.6 billion solely in its last fundraising round and has so far received more than $13 billion from Microsoft.