HubSpot co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah has recently revealed that he sold a domain worth more than $15 million to OpenAI. He had bought chat.com in 2023 and sold it a few months later without disclosing the buyer. He did, however, share that he sold the domain for more than he had originally paid for it, The Verge reported.
On Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared the URL on X. It automatically routes to ChatGPT.
https://t.co/n494J9IuEN
Sam Altman (@sama) November 6, 2024
Following the disclosure, Shah implied that the AI startup paid him in shares instead of cash.
"I am not disclosing the exact price yet, but it's in 8 figures and is the most expensive domain name transaction I've ever been involved with," he wrote on LinkedIn.
In his recent post on X, the HubSpot boss added that has known Altman "for over a decade since before OpenAI". He also implied that he was paid for the domain in shares instead of cash since he does not like "profiting off of people he considers friends" and because he "always wanted to own OpenAI shares."
"I think Chat-based UX is the next big thing in software," Shah said, explaining why he chose to buy the domain. "Communicating with computers/software through a natural language interface is much more intuitive. This is made possible by Generative AI. Chat.com is absolutely brilliant in terms of simplicity, shortness and being totally on point and meeting the moment. It immediately creates user trust. Somebody (not me) will build a massively successful product/company on it."
Rebranding OpenAI
The removal of “GPT” from the chat.com domain aligns with OpenAI’s attempts at rebranding the startup. In September, it had announced a new series of reasoning models starting with “o1”, The Verge reported. The company's former chief research officer Bob McGrew told the publication he hoped that the o1 series would mark “the first step of newer, more sane names” to better communicate the company’s work.
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