It seems OpenAI has acquired chat.com. Sam Altman just posted on X to tell the world about chat.com. Opening chat.com now redirects to chatgpt.com.
An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed this acquisition to Techcrunch via email. however, he didn’t confirm how much the company paid for the domain.
Chat.com was initially resisted in September 1996. The domain mainly became news when Dharmesh Shah, the co-founder and CTO of HubSpot, acquired it in March 2023 for over $10 million. In a LinkedIn post, he confirmed his plans to sell the domain and would donate a share of the profit to Sal Khan and Khan Academy. Namebio suggests the domain was last sold for $15.5 million in March 2023.
Since the company has set up the redirection from chat.com to chatgpt.com, it confirms that OpenAI isn’t planning to rebrand ChatGPT. It only secured the domain to keep its brand safe. Chat.com is a shorter domain that would be easier for users to type. But we can’t say if OpenAI has plans to host ChatGPT on chat.com.
