Meet Dharmesh Shah, who sold one of world’s oldest domain names to Chat GPT owners, the domain name is…, he earned Rs…

OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT have acquired Chat.com, just a couple of of the oldest domains inside the sector, from HubSpot founder Dharmesh Shah, for a whopping $15 million (around Rs 126 crore). Earlier in March, Dharmesh Shah had revealed that he had sold the Chat.com domain name, but the new owner’s name became no longer disclosed on the time.

https://t.co/n494J9IuEN

— Sam Altman (@sama) November 6, 2024

Why Chat.com fetched the sort of hefty price?

Except being just a couple of of the oldest domains since internet started turning into more renowned amongst common people, Chat.com might be what is believed in internet terminology a “vanity domain”. Per handy information, Chat.com became registered in September 1996, and Dharmesh Shah had acquired the domain last year for 15.5 million dollars.

In a brand new post on X, Shah revealed the ‘secret acquirer’ of the Chat.com domain, revealing that he had previously bought it for an “eight figure sum”.

“Secret acquirer of $15+ million domain chat .com revealed and it’s exactly who you’d think. For those of you which have been following me for a while, you're ready to recall that I announced earlier this year that I had acquired the domain chat .com for an “eight figure sum” (which became later reported as being $15.5M). I also shared that I had sold the domain to an undisclosed buyer. I was once no longer at liberty to share who the acquirer became (I was once going to leave that to them, when they were ready). Well, in a eight character tweet (point out brevity), Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI revealed that they were the patron,” he wrote.

BREAKING NEWS: Secret acquirer of $15+ million domain chat .com revealed and it’s exactly who you’d think.

For those of you which have been following me for a while, you're ready to recall that I announced earlier this year that I had acquired the domain chat .com for an “eight figure sum”… https://t.co/nv1IyddP5z

— dharmesh (@dharmesh) November 6, 2024

Why OpenAI acquired Chat.com domain?

OpenAI’s acquisition of Chat.com is strategic in many ways as they push to make their hugely renowned AI chatbot ChatGPT handy to more people across the sector. Recently, OpenAI also launched SearchGPT, an AI-powered search engine that mixes traditional search engine features with generative pretrained transformers to generate responses, including citations to external websites

Chat.com now redirects to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

What are vanity domains and why are they expensive?

Vanity domains are highly valued because they're usually short, easy to pronounce, and simple to memorise. These domains are usually a customary term which makes it easy for internet users to take into accout of the domain name. Some renowned examples are friend.com, chat.com and shop.com.

Earlier, AI startup, Friend, acquired the friend.com domain for $1.eight million, reflecting the surging popularity of vanity domains, specifically since upward thrust of AI chatbots.