Winners & losers: The world's most expensive domain name sale has taken place. It was for AI.com, which was bought by the founder and CEO of Crypto.com for an incredible $70 million. Unsurprisingly, the deal was paid for entirely using cryptocurrency.
Kris Marszalek bought AI.com from an unknown seller ahead of the Super Bowl, so an ad for the site could air during the game. Unfortunately, shortly after the ad ran, many noticed the website was down.
>Crypto guys (no AI background) buys https://t.co/UKlNob2Io4 for $70M
– Michał Podlewski (@trajektoriePL) February 9, 2026
>Burns $10M on a Super Bowl ad
>Slogan: "Accelerating the arrival of AGI"
>Turns out it's just a thin OpenClaw wrapper
>Asks for your credit card right away just to "claim a handle"
>Website looks like a cheap... pic.twitter.com/v2Swx8yLjz
The $70 million Marszalek paid smashes the previous domain name sales record – the $49.7 million paid for CarInsurance.com. It's double the $35 million it cost to buy VacationRentals.com, while Voice.com went for $30 million. Also on the list are PrivateJet.com ($30 million), 360.com ($17 million), and Sex.com, which has sold twice for over $13 million.
Paying $70 million for a domain name, even one as coveted as AI.com, sounds insane, but Marszalek believes his purchase represents a good deal. "With assets like AI.com, there are no substitutes," Broker Larry Fischer, who facilitated the sale, told the Financial Times. "When one becomes available, the opportunity may never present itself again."
Despite the eye-watering price, Marszalek's purchase also highlights how fiercely contested AI branding has become. As companies race to stake their claim in the space, owning a simple, instantly recognizable domain could prove just as valuable as the technology built behind it.
Imagine buying https://t.co/s0VAPRv0sf for $9 in 1996. Advanced Instruments Corp back in 1996 (https://t.co/5ZTvG7huci) pic.twitter.com/gQF4JW23gY
– Jeremy Cabral (@jeremycabral) February 8, 2026
AI.com offers customers personal AI agents, both free and subscription-based, for the likes of messaging, app usage, stock trading, even making dating profiles.
According to the site, the agents operate on the user's behalf – organizing work, building projects, etc. Users can have multiple agents performing multiple tasks. This is apparently done while respecting their privacy and remaining permission-based. It's unclear whether AI.com uses its own models or licenses them from others.
Marszalek is certainly confident that artificial intelligence isn't going to be the bubble many claim it is. "If you take a long-term view – 10 to 20 years – [AI] is going to be one of the greatest technological waves of our lifetime," he told the FT.
Buying an appropriate and catchy domain name doesn't always guarantee success. In February 2018, Arizona resident Richard Blair paid $10,000 for the Lambo.com domain, likely hoping to make a tidy profit by selling it – Lambo is a popular nickname for the company. But the $75 million he wanted proved too excessive, so a court made him turn it over to the car company for nothing. Not only did he lose the $10,000 he paid, but he's also on the hook for the legal fees.
At $70 million, AI.com is now the most expensive domain name ever sold
