Did OpenAI just spend more than $10 million on a URL?

Image: OpenAI

On Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted a simple URL on X: chat.com. It automatically routes to OpenAI’s popular chatbot, ChatGPT.

Prior to this, the domain was owned by Dharmesh Shah, the 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 had sold the domain, though he wouldn’t disclose the details of the sale or the buyer. Notably, he did confirm that he sold the domain for more than he had 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...

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