Despite its eventual legal woes, ChatGPT.com was hand-registered in late 2022 for $9.63 dollars, then flipped for a whopping $85,000 dollars.
The amazing story of the domain matching one of the dominant brands in 2023, ChatGPT, began when an observant guy, Mike Santiago, watched a YouTube video about emerging technologies.
One of the buzzwords in that video was “ChatGPT” and Mike’s domain investor instinct kicked in. Assuming it was already taken, he was surprised to see that it was available. A quick registration later, the domain ChatGPT.com was born on November 30, 2022.
Mike Santiago, founder of OnlineBusiness.com, saw the domain’s traffic skyrocketing during the following week, reaching 6,000 visitors per day. Within three days a GoDaddy broker delivered an offer which resulted in a $85,000 dollar sale, eight days later.
The mystery buyer wasn’t OpenAI, however, as the domain was acquired for that amount by domain investor Rick Latona. Operating a PPC business headquartered in Puerto Rico, Rick monetized the domain’s traffic all through 2023, before being hit with a UDRP filed by OpenAI.
Subsequently, Latona settled outside of the UDRP process, however, for an unspecified amount and OpenAI uses ChatGPT.com as the official gateway to its AI-driven software.
Read the full story about the original registration of ChatGPT.com.
