Crypto.com CEO spends $70M on AI.com domain, then site crashes during Super Bowl launch

Crypto.com places $70M bet on AI.com domain ahead of Super Bowl | TechCrunch

Just in time to create a new Super Bowl ad, Crypto.com founder Kris Marszalek has made the priciest domain purchase in history, buying AI.com for $70 million, according to the Financial Times. The deal, paid entirely in cryptocurrency to an unknown seller, shatters previous records. (Broker Larry Fischer, who facilitated the sale, is presumably celebrating his good fortune.) Marszalek plans to debut the site during Sunday's big game, offering consumers a personal AI agent for messaging, app usage, and stock trading. "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. The purchase rewrites the domain record books -- not that crypto industry itself is known for its restraint when it comes to spending. Previously, CarInsurance.com held the crown at $49.7 million (2010), followed by VacationRentals.com ($35 million in 2007) and Voice.com ($30 million in 2019). Other eye-popping sales include PrivateJet.com ($30 million), 360.com ($17 million), and Sex.com, which has sold twice for over $13 million each time, though its second owner went bankrupt trying to monetize it. "With assets like AI.com, there are no substitutes," Fischer told the FT. "When one becomes available, the opportunity may never present itself again." Whether these mega-dollar domains actually deliver returns remains an open question. But for Marszalek, who already owns Crypto.com and dropped $700 million on stadium naming rights, owning two category-defining domains is apparently worth the outlay.

AI.com Launches After $70 Million Sale and a Super Bowl Debut

Macy has been working for CNET for coming on 2 years. Prior to CNET, Macy received a North Carolina College Media Association award in sports writing. After the excitement of Bad Bunny's halftime show, several quarters of a low-scoring football game and a slew of AI-generated ads, you may have missed this fourth incident. AI.com -- one of the internet's most sought-after domain names -- officially entered the public spotlight with its commercial broadcast debut, following a reported $70 million sale. The ad, broadcast during the fourth quarter of the game, introduced AI.com, a platform that lets you access an AI agent designed to manage and automate your daily tasks, according to the press release. The domain was purchased by Kris Marszalek, the CEO of Crypto.com, in what has been widely described as one of the most expensive domain transactions ever disclosed. Read also: Your Recap of Super Bowl 2026 Ads Is Here: Baby Yoda, Pokemon and Much More Since GetYourDomain.com announced the AI.com domain was up for sale in March 2025, there has been wide speculation about what the domain would ultimately become. That answer arrived during Super Bowl LX, when an ad directed viewers to AI.com and positioned it as a gateway to AI-powered tools designed to assist with everyday digital tasks. The Super Bowl appearance immediately drove a surge of interest. People rushed to the site following the broadcast, with some reporting slow load times, temporary outages and a sign-up process that raised questions about pricing, privacy and functionality. AI.com presents itself as a hub for AI "agents" that can perform tasks on your behalf, from managing communications to handling financial and productivity-related actions. The pitch leans heavily on automation and convenience, tapping into the same themes driving investment across the AI sector. "We are at a fundamental shift in AI's evolution as we rapidly move beyond basic chats to AI agents actually getting things done for humans," Marszalek said in a press release. "Our vision is a decentralized network of billions of agents who self-improve and share these improvements with each other, vastly and rapidly expanding agentic capabilities and accelerating the advent of AGI." Artificial General Intelligence is a hypothetical concept of AI that would be able to match or surpass human thinking and cognitive abilities. Essentially, the tech would be able to execute any intellectual task a human can, such as understanding, learning, drawing connections and problem-solving. So far, details about the platform's long-term roadmap remain limited. The site emphasizes early access and experimentation over fully defined consumer products, underscoring that AI.com is still in an early phase despite its polished branding. While not the focus of the launch, AI.com's privacy policy has drawn attention from some early users and privacy experts. The policy outlines broad data collection practices, including personal identifiers and usage information, and leaves room for data sharing with third parties under certain conditions. PCMag's Emily Forlini also points out that the AI agent will act autonomously, but you, as its human counterpart, are liable for everything it does. "The agent may take actions that produce unintended, undesirable or harmful results," reads section 7.1 of AI.com's terms and conditions. "You are solely responsible for reviewing, approving and supervising all agent actions, particularly high-stakes actions involving financial transactions, communications or data modifications." Further analysis by experts has shown the language of its privacy policy is expansive and lacks specificity, which is a common issue in emerging AI platforms that are still defining how their services will operate at scale. The concerns reflect a wider unease about how AI companies handle your data, particularly when new tools are rolled out quickly to large audiences.

AI.com's $85 million Super Bowl ad campaign falls foul as traffic crashes servers -- the campaign allegedly cost $15 million for the ads, $70 million for the domain name

AI.com bought its way onto the biggest advertising stage in the world on Sunday night, running a fourth-quarter Super Bowl ad spot that told tens of millions of sports fans worldwide to head to the site and create a handle. Hyped-up viewers arrived in droves, and then the site crashed. Within minutes of the ad airing, users across social platforms reported that AI.com was either unreachable or stuck in failed sign-up loops, turning what was meant to be the site's big launch moment into an unexpected stress test that failed right before the eyes of millions. The company soon restored its service, but first impressions count. Taking to X.com, co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek, best known as the CEO of Crypto.com, said that the company had "prepared for scale, but not for THIS," later attributing the disruption to external factors outside the company's control. Marszalek later wrote that the website was "hitting Google rate limits (which are at their absolute global maximum)." That excuse might sound like your typical tech bro attempt to pass the buck to somebody else, but there's some plausibility to his claim given how AI.com's onboarding works. At launch, the site funnels new users through a single "continue with Google" authentication option. Once millions of users suddenly arrived and began attempting to create their AI agents, Google may have begun throttling requests, effectively making the site unusable. For a company that reportedly spent $70 million to secure the AI.com domain -- a level of investment that suggests it's a business that wants to establish itself as a foundational platform -- it's arguably inexcusable for its first mass-market test to expose a launch stack that had zero redundancy or meaningful margin for error. When the single point of failure gave way in the form of throttled Google authentication requests, it was lights out. AI.com is selling itself as a way to create personal AI agents that can execute tasks across apps and operate with verifying levels of access depending on subscription tier. That's an ambitious promise, and that ultimately falls flat when the company behind it can't even get the basics like user authentication squared away right out of the gate. According to Adweek, AI accounted for 23% of ads shown during this year's Super Bowl -- a grim statistic for those of us who are fed up with the force-feeding.

AI.com Domain Name Sells for $70 Million, Set to Launch at Super Bowl LX

Would you trust an AI agent to trade stocks on your behalf, automate workflows for your job, organize and execute tasks in your calendar, or even update your online dating profile? The co-founder and CEO of Crypto.com, one of the world's largest crypto exchanges, is betting big money that many people will. Kris Marszalek, CEO of Crypto.com, is launching ai.com, a new platform that will offer consumers an autonomous AI agent the company claims can manage daily tasks on their behalf. Ai.com is set to officially launch its agentic AI product on February 8, 2026, during Super Bowl LX on NBC. Larry Fischer, director of GetYourDomain, claims that the ai.com domain name sold for $70 million -- one of the largest domain-name acquisitions ever recorded -- allegedly double the previous record set by voice.com. Meanwhile, Super Bowl advertising slots are widely known to cost tens of millions of dollars. Crypto.com's Super Bowl advertisement in 2022 was reported to have cost up to $7 million. According to the official announcement, users will be able to access ai.com for free, with additional paid subscription tiers offering more advanced capabilities and increased input token limits. Users reportedly choose a username and AI handle before generating their agent immediately. The company says it is "actively exploring" additional product offerings in the future, including "financial services integrations, agent marketplaces, and human- and agency-co-social networks." "Our vision is a decentralized network of billions of agents who self-improve and share these improvements with each other, vastly and rapidly expanding agentic capabilities and accelerating the advent of AGI," said Marszalek. Marszalek is not alone in his optimism about AI agents. In 2024, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said advanced AI agents capable of acting like "super-competent colleagues" could become artificial intelligence's "killer" application, adding that current apps like ChatGPT will one day seem "incredibly dumb." Meanwhile, Nvidia rolled out its AI agents for businesses in January 2025, calling them "knowledge robots" that "can reason, plan, and take action to quickly analyze large quantities of data," performing tasks such as distilling insights from video, PDFs, and other images. Microsoft also announced Agent 365, a new platform for managing agents, at Microsoft Ignite in San Francisco in November 2025. Agentic AI is slowly becoming more accessible to the masses, with Google adding an "auto browse" mode to Chrome that can automatically complete tasks on users' behalf, such as buying items online or scheduling appointments. The feature is currently only available to paid subscribers of Google AI Pro, which starts at $20 per month.

The Crypto.com guy bought AI.com (and a Super Bowl ad)

Kris Marszalek, CEO and co-founder of crypto and stock trading platform Crypto.com, has bought an expensive website. In this case it's AI.com, valued at one point at $100 million, which will serve as the online home for his new company of the same name. The website launch is being paired with a Super Bowl ad that will air this Sunday. AI.com's main offering is an AI agent that "operates on the user's behalf -- organizing work, sending messages, executing actions across apps, building projects, and more." It's a similar concept to what companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and Google are promising with their own agents and agentic features, and notably lacking in hard details. Users can make multiple agents with AI.com and have them do a variety of tasks -- the company's press release mentions trading stocks and updating a dating profile, for example -- while remaining permission-based and private. It's not clear if AI.com is offering its own AI models or licensing those offered by other companies, but clearly whatever it offers, both for free and via a planned paid subscription, will be flexible. Like Crypto.com's big push into the mainstream during late 2021 and early 2022, AI.com is arriving at a particularly hype-filled time in the AI industry. Anthropic's Claude Code and Claude Cowork tools have been taken up as evidence that AI might actually make people more productive, so AI.com's decision to push an agent of its own is timely. Of course, after Crypto.com's big Matt Damon ad in 2021, and Super Bowl ad in 2022, Bitcoin prices hit an all-time low in June 2022. Ironically, Marszalek's AI.com is also launching during a particularly nasty "crypto winter" which has lowered the price of Bitcoin to under $66,000, a steep drop from the $127,000 it cost in October 2025. That's not to suggest the AI.com CEO is a groundhog for deflating hype balloons. More likely, it's a sign that the future of AI could be as unpredictable and volatile as cryptocurrency.

Crypto.com CEO spends $70 million on AI.com in the most expensive domain sale ever

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. What just happened? 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. 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. 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.

Crypto.com Founder Buys AI.com in 'Largest Domain Purchase in History'

Crypto.com co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek has launched a new AI agent platform under the brand AI.com, a domain he reportedly purchased for $70 million. The new company claims this transaction is "believed to be the single largest domain purchase in history." There's a chance there have been even larger deals that have not been disclosed. Historically, Cars.com has been cited as the most valuable domain name ever after financial statements tied to its acquisition in 2014 revealed the site was listed as an intangible asset worth $872.3 million. According to a press release, the platform will allow users to generate a private, personal AI agent that operates on the user’s behalf. The company says the AI agent will be able to send messages, build projects, trade stocks, and even update a dating profile. The company said that all user agents will operate in a dedicated secure environment with data encryption using user-specific keys. “We are at a fundamental shift in AI’s evolution as we rapidly move beyond basic chats to AI agents actually getting things done for humans,†said Marszalek, in the press release. “Our vision is a decentralized network of billions of agents who self-improve and share these improvements with each other, vastly and rapidly expanding agentic capabilities and accelerating the advent of AGI.†The website’s landing page currently features a countdown clock for Sunday, when the platform is set to officially launch following a Super Bowl commercial. Marszalek is set to serve as CEO for both Crypto.com and AI.com. The Financial Times reports, citing the deal’s broker, that AI.com was sold for $70 million. Back in March 2025, GetYourDomain.com announced the domain was up for sale with a $100 million asking price. Marszalek launched Crypto.com in 2016, formerly known as Monaco. The company eventually acquired the Crypto.com domain, when it was reportedly worth $5 to 10 million. It has since grown into one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, with more than 150 million retail users. Now Marszalek appears to be betting he can do the same in the AI space. “When we started Crypto.com there were around a thousand different exchanges, and we somehow managed to make it work,†Marszalek told The Financial Times. “We will make this [AI.com] work one way or another.†He added, “I thought it was quite interesting that one person can own two domains that stand for such important categories." He has reportedly already received interest from buyers for the domain, but believes AI.com will help the company build brand awareness and trust with customers. Cyrpto.com is no stranger to big, splashy marketing schemes. In 2021, it reached a $700 million multi-decade deal to rename Staples Center to the "Crypto.com Arena."

Biggest ever website domain deal sees AI.com bought by Crypto.com founder

Kris Marszalek, founder of aptly named crypto platform Crypto.com, has bought AI.com for $70 million, making it the most expensive domain sale ever per Financial Times reporting. And of course, the deal was financed entirely through cryptocurrency. But that's not the only 'Kris Marszalek' thing about the deal - the founder, who's previously spent big on Super Bowl advertising, managed to acquire the domain right ahead of the 2026 Super Bowl, in-keeping with trends to capture big audiences. Marszalek reportedly plans to launch AI.com as a personal AI agent for messaging, app use and stock trading. Domains like this rarely come up for sale, but the sale of AI.com managed to break all records by becoming the most expensive domain ever sold, surpassing CarInsurance.com ($49.7 million), VacationRentals.com ($35 million) and Voice.com ($35 million). AI.com is likely considered the single most valuable domain in artificial intelligence simply because of its simplicity and clarity - it's existed since the early days of the internet and has exchanged hands multiple times, but it's only because of the rise of AI that it hit record-high prices. While it's unclear whether the domain ownership will deliver any long-term returns, it could serve as an important investment if artificial intelligence continues to stay relevant.

AI.com Debuts During Super Bowl After $70 Million Domain Name Buy -- What's the Deal? - Decrypt

An AI.com rep said the site is an early beta focused on reserving user handles. AI.com went live during Super Bowl LX on Sunday, following one of the most expensive domain name acquisitions in internet history -- a $70 million purchase by Kris Marszalek, co-founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com, as reported by the Financial Times. The high-profile debut was overshadowed by service outages and uncertainty over what the AI platform actually offered users who were piqued by the high-profile TV ad. The domain name AI.com was first registered in 1993, but it ultimately passed through multiple hands and tech cycles, including the dot-com boom and bust, before reemerging during the current AI surge. Crypto.com built its profile through large branding deals, including a $700 million deal in 2021 to rename Los Angeles' Staples Center as Crypto.com Arena. The AI.com purchase marks the second high-profile domain acquisition for Marszalek following his $10 million purchase of the Crypto.com domain from noted cryptographer Matt Blaze in 2018. "Last year, an opportunity came up to acquire the AI.com domain, and we thought about the long-term view of this, 10-to-20 years from now, that AI is going to be one of the greatest technological waves of our lifetime," an AI.com spokesperson told Decrypt. "There's great value in owning the touchpoint of this space, and there are also good business reasons to own two domains that stand for their respective categories." Marszalek, founder and CEO of AI.com, said the purchase is a part of a long-term strategy. "AI.com is on a mission to accelerate the arrival of AGI by building a decentralized network of autonomous, self-improving AI agents that perform real-world tasks for the good of humanity," he posted on X on Friday. The site's debut Sunday during a fourth-quarter television spot appeared to cause more confusion than intelligence, artificial or otherwise. Many viewers encountered repeated 504 gateway time-out errors while attempting to access the site. Marszalek attributed the disruption to demand and "insane traffic levels" that overwhelmed AI.com's systems and triggered Google rate limits. "We prepared for scale, but not for this," he wrote. AI.com currently functions as a place where customers can reserve a username for future agents intended to manage calendars and automate workflows, the company said. On Monday, Marszalek said AI.com would begin rolling out its live product "within 48 hours." But the AI.com onboarding process has drawn criticism online. When signing up for a username and AI agent handle, users are prompted to connect a Google account and enter credit card information for verification, despite the absence of functional tools or agents. According to the spokesperson, the credit card verification is necessary to prevent abuse and prove humanity. But the move has been ill-received by some, with tech writer Michał Podlewski citing the card verification as one reason why he thought the AI.com launch looked like "absolute peak of the AI bubble." Others on X questioned the platform's technical depth, with critics pointing out that AI.com looks suspiciously like OpenClaw, the AI agent platform that went viral earlier in recent weeks. The company spokesperson pushed back on that idea: "The AI.com offering is built on a combination of AI.com proprietary specs and open-source capabilities that the AI.com team has worked to enhance from both technological and security perspectives."

What is AI.com? Mysterious website asks for people's credit card information after Super Bowl ad

On the heels of its intriguing Super Bowl ad, AI.com is garnering all sorts of interest -- so much, in fact, that it actually crashed the company's website, as Super Bowl viewers scrambled to see what the company that no one has heard of was all about. The new AI platform, founded by Crypto.com CEO and co-founder Kris Marszalek, reportedly spent a whopping $85 million on the Super Bowl spot, only to garner so much traffic that he had to post on X: "Insane traffic levels. We prepared for scale, but not for THIS," followed by three fire emojis. That 30-second ad, which ran during the coveted fourth-quarter ad space, encouraged fans to go to the site and create an AI-handle, lured by the promise it would "perform real-world tasks for the good of humanity." What exactly does that mean? According to the company's release, "With a few clicks, anyone can now generate a private, personal AI agent that doesn't just answer questions, but actually operates on the user's behalf -- organizing work, sending messages, executing actions across apps, building projects, and more," the company said.

Ai.Com, Founded by Kris Marszalek, Announces Upcoming AI Agents

Proponents of AI agents say the new technology will simplify crypto trading and other financial activities for the average user. AI platform ai.com, founded by Crypto.com co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek, announced on Friday that it will be launching an autonomous AI agent for retail consumers. The agentic AI will be able to execute functions including trading stocks, workflow automation and simple tasks like calendar updates and managing changes to online social profiles, according to an announcement from the company. The agents will feature segregated user data, secured by encryption keys unique to each user, and run according to user-set restrictions on what the agent is allowed to do, the announcement said. AI agents have garnered significant attention from users over the last year. About one quarter (23%) of respondents surveyed by investment research firm McKinsey indicated that their organizations were expanding the use of AI agents, according to a November report from the company. The growth of autonomous AI agents can automate crypto trading strategies and wallet management, removing the technical barrier-to-entry for new users unfamiliar with blockchain systems and onchain transaction execution, proponents of the technology say. Related: Crypto dev launches website for agentic AI to 'rent a human' These technical barriers include choosing the correct blockchain network and token protocols to send funds to, and complex user interfaces that are harder to navigate for new users, according to Jonathan Farnell, CEO of crypto exchange Freedx. Agentic AI can abstract away the technical complexity of cryptocurrencies by selecting the cheapest and fastest execution pathways and simplifying stablecoin usage, according to Tether co-founder Reeve Collins. This can include optimization for arbitrage or yield-bearing opportunities, Collins told Cointelegraph. "When AI is integrated, all of the complexity in this space will be gone," Collins said, adding that autonomous AI agents will allow users to hold and navigate larger portfolios of increasingly diverse token standards.

A 10-year-old boy bought a dot-com domain for just Rs 300 using mother's credit card. Now he sold it for Rs 600 crore in crypto

AI.com has been sold for $70 million in a cryptocurrency deal. This marks the largest publicly disclosed domain name sale. The buyer is Kris Marszalek. The seller, Arsyan Ismail, originally bought the domain for $100 in 1993. The transaction was completed in April 2025. AI.com was relaunched during Super Bowl LX, focusing on agentic AI. In 1993, when most homes did not even have internet access, a 10-year-old boy quietly registered a two-letter dot-com domain using his mother's credit card. He paid just Rs 300. Three decades later, as artificial intelligence powers everything from stock trading to chatbots, that same domain has been sold for Rs 600 crore in a cryptocurrency deal, turning a childhood click into one of the most expensive domain sales ever reported. AI.com has been sold for $70 million (about Rs 600 crore) in a cryptocurrency deal that is now being described as the largest publicly disclosed domain name sale to date. The buyer is Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek. The seller is Malaysian tech entrepreneur Arsyan Ismail, who first bought the domain in 1993 at the age of 10 for just $100 (around Rs 300 at the time) using his mother's credit card. The transaction was completed in April 2025 and paid entirely in cryptocurrency. AI.com officially re-launched during Super Bowl LX, where Crypto.com introduced a new platform focused on "agentic AI". Arsyan Ismail registered AI.com in 1993. Malaysian publications reported that he picked the name not because he predicted artificial intelligence would become a global industry, but because the letters matched his initials. At that time, internet access in Malaysia was still rare. The domain remained in his ownership for decades without major public attention. As artificial intelligence became central to global technology and investment trends, short and rare domain names gained high value. Two-letter domains are extremely limited, and AI.com is among the most recognisable in that category. Multiple reports confirmed the $70 million price tag. The sale surpasses the $49.7 million paid for CarInsurance.com in 2010, according to Fintech Malaysia, making it the most expensive publicly reported domain name deal so far. The payment was made fully in cryptocurrency. AI.com re-launched during Super Bowl LX as part of Crypto.com's push into "agentic AI" -- personal AI agents designed to send messages, trade stocks and perform tasks across apps. Marszalek said owning such a category-defining domain was essential to avoid being "commoditised" in the AI race. Though not widely known outside tech circles, Arsyan Ismail has been active in Malaysia's technology ecosystem for years. He worked on early social networking projects and held roles at Nuffnang and Friendster. He later founded 1337 Tech and has been an early adopter of Bitcoin and other digital assets. Reports said he received offers as high as $100 million after listing the domain in 2025. However, he finalised the $70 million agreement and advised others not to "over-negotiate with a billionaire." (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel)

Crypto.com CEO Launches Platform to Mainstream Personal AI Agents | PYMNTS.com

The platform, ai.com, will launch Sunday (Feb. 8) after being featured in a Super Bowl commercial on the same day, the company said in a Friday (Feb. 6) press release. With ai.com, anyone will be able to generate a personal AI agent and have it complete tasks on their behalf, such as organizing work, sending messages, executing actions across apps and building projects, according to the release. No technical knowledge will be required. Users will be able to have these agents do things like trade stocks, automate workflows, organize and execute daily tasks, and update their online dating profile, the release said. As the AI agents develop new capabilities to complete tasks, those improvements will be shared with other agents on the network, making them all more useful, per the release. Each agent will be private, permission-based and fully under the user's control, according to the release. Users can get started on the platform for free. They will be able to access enhanced capabilities and increased input tokens via paid subscription tiers, per the release. Marszalek will serve as CEO of both ai.com and Crypto.com, according to the release. "We are at a fundamental shift in AI's evolution as we rapidly move beyond basic chats to AI agents actually getting things done for humans," Marszalek said in the release. "Our vision is a decentralized network of billions of agents who self-improve and share these improvements with each other, vastly and rapidly expanding agentic capabilities and accelerating the advent of AGI [artificial general intelligence]." The Financial Times reported Friday that Marszalek paid $70 million for the ai.com domain name and that this is the highest price ever disclosed for the sale of a domain name. The PYMNTS Intelligence report "How AI Becomes the Place Consumers Start Everything" found that AI platforms are becoming the place where many consumers begin tasks such as planning, learning, shoppingand deciding.

Kris Marszalek: The Man Who Splurged $70Mn for a Web Domain

The CEO of Crypto.com seems to be offering a new line of business through agentic ai solutions Till last week, Kris Marszalek was as the CEO and one of the co-founders of Crypto.com a cryptocurrency trading company based out of Singapore that boasts millions of customers. When he coughed up a record $70 million for the web domain AI.com, everyone sat up and took notice - especially the big guns vying for AI supremacy. He launched a new AI agent platform just in time for the Super Bowl, coming out with an ad that quickly resulting in the servers crashing. Meanwhile, we hear that the entire deal was paid for in cryptocurrency to an unknown seller. Cryptocurrency markets saw severe volatility in early 2026, with Bitcoin falling over 30% from its late 2024. Marszalek debuted in time for Sunday's Big Bowl game offering consumers a personal AI agent for messaging, app usage, and stock trading. "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," is how the man described his idea to the Financial Times. Only time will tell whether his big business idea fructifies or not, but it appears to have definitely rewritten the record books when it comes to paying money for a domain of one's choice. For several years we knew that CarInsurance.com fetched $49.7 million in 2010 while Voice.com got $30 million in 2019. A press release from the folks over at AI.com said the platform would allow users to generate a private, personal AI agent that operates on the user's behalf. The company also notes that the AI agent will be able to send messages, build projects, trade stocks, and even update a dating profile. Further, the press release says all user agents would operate in a dedicated secure environment with data encryption being achieved via user-specific keys. "We are at a fundamental shift in AI's evolution as we rapidly move beyond basic chats to AI agents actually getting things done for humans," says Marszalek, Our vision is a decentralized network of billions of agents who self-improve and share these improvements with each other, vastly and rapidly expanding agentic capabilities and accelerating the advent of AGI, he adds. In the past, we have observed that these big ticket transactions around domain purchases seldom deliver results when the ownership changes hands. However, Marszalek seems to be basking in the glory of owing two such domains that represent an entire industry segment. Whether these category-defining domains are worth the cost is something we will know only in the future.