OpenAI Buys Chat.com Domain for ChatGPT, Costing Them North of $10 Million

OpenAI is now taking ChatGPT to a simpler experience on the web after Sam Altman purchased an internet domain that goes by "chat.com" to allow users to simply type this URL to access the chatbot. With this move, OpenAI is embracing more of the "chat" name of its renowned artificial intelligence program, with the company known for referring to it simply as "chat" for years.

Instead of typing the entire "ChatGPT.com" to the address field on the browser, users may now easily enter four letters and the top-level domain to get to the chatbot and enter their prompts to go on about their day.

OpenAI Buys 'Chat.com' Domain for ChatGPT

Frequent users of ChatGPT only need to type chat (or even fewer letters) to access the chatbot on their web browsers, but OpenAI went above and beyond to purchase the official domain for its chatbot. In a new post by Sam Altman via X, he shared a new URL showing "chat.com," and revealed that clicking it would take users to ChatGPT's browser version for users to enjoy.

Previously, users are taken to another website when typing in chat.com, so they have to complete the entire domain of OpenAI's chatbot on their browsers to access the experience. However, for those who are frequent users, browser auto-fills may already bring them to ChatGPT with fewer letters.

Sam Altman, OpenAI Pay More Than $10M for New Domain

The Verge revealed that it was HubSpot founder Dharmesh Shah who previously owned the "chat.com" domain, which he purchased in early 2023 for $10 million but later sold it after several months. Shah previously mentioned that after purchasing the domain, another buyer was interested in the URL, and he sold it to them at a higher price, flipping it for more than what he paid for.

However, it remains unclear if this mysterious buyer was OpenAI or Sam Altman, but it is evident that this latest domain acquisition is more than $10 million, as mentioned by Shah.

OpenAI and Its Development of ChatGPT

Since its debut in 2022, OpenAI has seen significant success with its generative AI chatbot, ChatGPT, which is now one of the most easily recognizable artificial intelligence services in the world, earning them significant praise and criticism. Despite the massive developments to the chatbot, as well as getting the latest GPT large language model (LLM), analysts claim that it still "hallucinates" fake links to users.

Amid its immense success and global significance, there are still a lot of plans for OpenAI to expand the capabilities and power of its artificial intelligence models that will benefit its products like ChatGPT, DALL-E and Sora, to name a few. Altman admitted that he wanted to revamp ChatGPT's name earlier this year, and this was alongside the development of the upcoming GPT-5 LLM.

ChatGPT remains one of the most easily recognizable chatbots in the world, and it sees global popularity in the AI industry for what it currently offers, available across mobile, PC, web browsers and more. Despite having autofill helping users access ChatGPT easily on the web, OpenAI still wants to make everything "chat" about its AI chatbot, with this over $10 million domain purchase securing them of the new URL for ChatGPT.