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

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 possible by Generative A.I," Shah wrote in a LinkedIn post announcing the purchase - which chat.com briefly redirected to before he resold it. After the sale, Domain Name Wire noted that Shah had mentioned another buyer had been interested in the purchase and speculated he'd flipped it to them.

While the domain's full ownership history remains unclear, domain sales database NameBio reports that chat.com sold for $15.5 million on March 28, 2023. This timing aligns with Shah's LinkedIn post from May 25, 2023, announcing his sale after two months of ownership. OpenAI declined The Verge's request for comment; Shah didn't reply to a request for comment in time for publication.

The drop of "GPT" from the chat.com domain aligns with OpenAI's recent rebranding efforts. In September, the company announced a new series of reasoning models starting with "o1." At the time, former chief research officer Bob McGrew told The Verge he hoped that the o1 series would mark "the first step of newer, more sane names" to better communicate the company's work.

People hoarding "vanity domains" is a tale as old as the Internet itself. Just a few months ago, AI startup Friend spent $1.8 million on the domain friend.com after raising $2.5 million in funding. For OpenAI, more than $10 million is a drop in the bucket - the startup just raised $6.6 billion.