The official address of ChatGPT is chatgpt.com. But if you type chat.com into your browser’s address bar, you will also be redirected to OpenAI’s artificial intelligence. Indeed, this address is now controlled by the creator of ChatGPT. And as you can imagine, this one was not free. The chat.com domain name was purchased by OpenAI from Dharmesh Shah, the CTO and co-founder of the company HubSpot.
The amount of the transaction has not been disclosed, but it is certain that OpenAI paid a fortune to become the new owner of chat.com. But we have an idea of the value of this domain name, since the previous owner had paid more than 15 million dollars to acquire it. It was one of the largest domain name buyouts in history. As TechCrunch explains, chat.com was registered in 1996.
For his part, Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI, simply published a post on X indicating the new address.
BREAKING NEWS: Secret acquirer of $15+ million domain chat .com revealed and it’s exactly who you’d think.
For those of you who have been following me for a while, you may recall that I announced earlier this year that I had acquired the domain chat .com for an “8 figure sum”…
— dharmesh (@dharmesh) November 6, 2024
OpenAI looking for growth?
ChatGPT is today the benchmark in generative artificial intelligence. However, it seems that OpenAI is still looking for growth. And the chat.com address could make ChatGPT easier for Internet users to find, compared to chatgpt.com.
Although ChatGPT now has more than 200 million weekly active users, OpenAI would not yet be profitable. And increasing the number of users would allow it to attract more users to its premium offering, which would increase revenue.
Otherwise, remember that Apple is already preparing an iOS update which will allow users to integrate ChatGPT with Siri and its writing assistance tools, on products compatible with Apple Intelligence. This collaboration with Apple should also allow OpenAI to boost its growth, since it will be possible to benefit from the advantages of the ChatGPT Plus subscription on these integrations with the Apple ecosystem. In fact, we recently discovered that Apple should even offer a tool to switch from a free ChatGPT account to a paid account in the iPhone settings.
- OpenAI bought the chat.com address, which now redirects to ChatGPT
- The amount of the transaction is kept secret, but the former owner of this domain name paid more than 15 million dollars to acquire it
- This new address should make ChatGPT easier for users to find
