OpenAI has acquired Chat.com — one of the oldest domains on the Internet, registered in September 1996.
Last year, it became known that the domain was purchased by HubSpot founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah for $15.5 million, but a few months later he announced its resale — for a higher amount (but did not disclose the name of the new owner at the time).
«The reason I bought chat.com is simple: I believe that chat-based UX — is the next big thing in software. Communicating with computers/programs through a natural language interface is much more intuitive. It’s made possible by generative AI»,” Shah wrote on LinkedIn during the purchase announcement.
Later, Shah confirmed that the buyer was indeed OpenAI — and that he probably received shares rather than cash for the domain.
Meanwhile, Sam Altman posted the new address on Twitter without any comment:
The abandonment of «GPT» in the chat.com domain is consistent with OpenAI’s recent rebranding efforts. In September, the company announced a new series of «reasoning models», which starts from version «o1» (The company’s former chief scientist, Bob McGrew, said that «o1 would be the first step in creating new, smarter names for» that would better reflect the company’s work).
Source: The Verge, TechCrunch