Crypto.com places $70M bet on AI.com domain ahead of Super Bowl

In Brief

Just successful clip to make a caller Super Bowl ad, Crypto.com laminitis Kris Marszalek has made the priciest domain acquisition successful history, buying AI.com for $70 million, according to the Financial Times. The deal, paid wholly successful cryptocurrency to an chartless seller, shatters erstwhile records. (Broker Larry Fischer, who facilitated the sale, is presumably celebrating his bully fortune.)

Marszalek plans to debut the tract during Sunday’s large game, offering consumers a idiosyncratic AI cause for messaging, app usage, and banal trading. “If you instrumentality a semipermanent presumption — 10 to 20 years – [AI] is going to beryllium 1 of the top technological waves of our lifetime,” helium told the FT.

The acquisition rewrites the domain grounds books — not that crypto manufacture itself is known for its restraint erstwhile it comes to spending. Previously, CarInsurance.com held the crown astatine $49.7 cardinal (2010), followed by VacationRentals.com ($35 cardinal successful 2007) and Voice.com ($30 cardinal successful 2019). Other eye-popping income see PrivateJet.com ($30 million), 360.com ($17 million), and Sex.com, which has sold doubly for implicit $13 cardinal each time, though its 2nd proprietor went bankrupt trying to monetize it.

“With assets similar AI.com, determination are nary substitutes,” Fischer told the FT. “When 1 becomes available, the accidental whitethorn ne'er contiguous itself again.”

Whether these mega-dollar domains really present returns remains an unfastened question. But for Marszalek, who already owns Crypto.com and dropped $700 cardinal connected stadium naming rights, owning 2 category-defining domains is seemingly worthy the outlay.

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