Acquisition of highly coveted generic domain AI.com for a whopping $70 million has Crypto.com all over the headlines. Broker Larry Fischer handled this purchase, making it the most costly domain sale in history. It now has passed the previous record by CarInsurance.com, which sold for $49.7 million.
Kris Marszalek, the founder of Crypto.com, is the person in charge of this massive investment. He’s convinced that international challenge posed by artificial intelligence will undergird the value of AI.com over the next 20 years. Marszalek stated, “If you take a long-term view — 10 to 20 years — [AI] is going to be one of the greatest technological waves of our lifetime.”
Larry Fischer, who brokered the deal, has made a career of finding and using such unique assets. He remarked, “With assets like AI.com, there are no substitutes.” Fischer does not see AI.com as merely a domain name. He views it as the academic’s most precious asset in an age of poker-faced artificial intelligence.
The sale comes at a time when the domain name investment market has seen a number of high-profile sales. In 2007, VacationRentals.com sold for the then-unheard-of sum of $35 million. At the same time, Voice.com and PrivateJet.com each fetched $30 million apiece in their own independent transactions. In addition, 360.com advertising marketplace helped find a new owner for $17 million. While these are all impressive figures to date, all of that pales in comparison to the latest acquisition by Crypto.com.
Fischer, though, has underscored that chances to buy as prime a domain as AI.com just won’t come along again. Owning such a domain can be monumental for companies. It gives them a chance to position themselves as leaders on what’s possible in this golden age of technology.