It appears like Sam Altman simply acquired a 4 letter URL value greater than $15 million.
On Wednesday, the OpenAI CEO ominously tweeted a easy URL, chat.com, which is now the brand new residence of his firm’s flagship AI device, ChatGPT.
The brand new URL was beforehand owned by Dharmesh Shah, the cofounder of CRM platform HubSpot, who wrote on LinkedIn in 2023 that he paid an “8 figure sum” for it.
On the time, Shah wrote that it was “the most expensive domain name transaction I’ve ever been involved with,” saying he purchased the area identify as a result of he believes chat-based software program is the following massive factor. He additionally added he wouldn’t be utilizing the area identify for his personal firm and would promote it if a purchaser appeared.
“Chat.com is absolutely brilliant in terms of simplicity, shortness and being totally *on point* and meeting the moment,” Shah wrote on the time.
But, just some months later, Shah stated he had bought the area with out specifying who the customer was. He stated on the time he had used $250,000 of the good points from the sale and donated it to Khan Academy, a nonprofit instructional group.
Following Altman’s tweet, Shah confirmed that OpenAI had bought the area identify, which he stated he had purchased for $15.5 million. As for the worth that OpenAI paid for the URL, Shah was deliberately obscure.
In a tongue-in-cheek ChatGPT-style immediate in his submit, Shah appeared to suggest that he didn’t revenue off the area sale and sure took some OpenAI shares as cost. He acknowledged within the prompt-like passage that he has identified Altman for 10 years and doesn’t prefer to revenue off of his pals.
OpenAI didn’t instantly reply to Fortune’s request for remark.
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