The Most Expensive Domain Sale in History
Crypto.com co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek has acquired AI.com for $70 million, paid entirely in cryptocurrency, making it the largest publicly disclosed domain name transaction ever recorded. The deal, finalized in April 2025, was kept under wraps until February 6, 2026, just days before Marszalek debuted the platform with a 30-second commercial during Super Bowl LX on NBC.
The purchase shatters previous domain records. CarInsurance.com held the top spot at $49.7 million since 2010, followed by VacationRentals.com at $35 million in 2007 and Voice.com at $30 million in 2019. At $70 million, AI.com nearly doubles the old record and marks one of the largest single expenditures in crypto for a non-financial asset.
The seller's identity remains undisclosed. What is known: AI.com previously redirected to OpenAI's ChatGPT before Marszalek's purchase, making the domain switch a notable symbolic handoff from the AI establishment to a crypto-native founder.
Marszalek's Playbook: From Matt Damon to AI Agents
This is not Marszalek's first Super Bowl rodeo. Crypto.com ran a high-profile 2022 Super Bowl ad featuring LeBron James, following the infamous 2021 Matt Damon "Fortune Favors the Brave" campaign. Both ran during a bullish crypto cycle and drew mixed reactions when the market subsequently crashed.
The timing of this launch is similarly bold. Bitcoin was trading around $66,000 in early February, well below its October 2025 high near $127,000. Launching an AI venture during a crypto cooldown mirrors the 2022 playbook, though this time Marszalek is pivoting away from pure exchange marketing into a new product category entirely.
"We are at a fundamental shift in AI's evolution as we rapidly move beyond basic chats to AI agents actually getting things done," Marszalek said in the launch announcement. His stated mission: building a decentralized network of autonomous, self-improving AI agents that perform real-world tasks.
What AI.com Actually Does
The platform lets users create personal AI agents in roughly 60 seconds. Unlike standard chatbots that answer questions and stop, these agents are designed to execute multi-step tasks autonomously: organizing workflows, sending messages, managing calendars, executing actions across apps, building projects, and even trading stocks.
Key technical details from the launch:
- Permission-based architecture: Agents operate only within user-defined boundaries. Users grant or revoke specific capabilities.
- Encrypted environments: Each agent runs in a dedicated secure sandbox. Data is segregated and encrypted with user-specific keys.
- Self-improving network: When one agent builds a missing capability to complete a task, that improvement is shared across the entire network, benefiting millions of agents.
- Pricing: A free tier is available alongside paid subscriptions offering enhanced capabilities and increased input tokens.
The self-improving network mechanic is AI.com's most ambitious differentiator. If one user's agent learns how to cancel a subscription on a specific service, that skill propagates to every agent on the platform. In theory, this creates a compounding flywheel where the platform grows more capable with each new user and task.
A Crowded Super Bowl for AI
Marszalek's $70 million domain and Super Bowl ad did not arrive in a vacuum. According to iSpot, 23% of Super Bowl LX advertisers spotlighted AI. Google ran ads for Gemini. Anthropic showcased Claude. Amazon promoted Alexa's AI capabilities. Meta pushed its Oakley AI glasses. OpenAI launched an enterprise-focused platform called "Frontier" the same week.
With 30-second Super Bowl spots costing approximately $8 million, the advertising spend alone was significant before factoring in the domain cost. AI.com's total investment for the launch likely exceeded $80 million, making it one of the most expensive product debuts in both AI and crypto history.
The bet paid off in raw attention. The site experienced "insane traffic" in the hours after the ad, briefly crashing under the load before engineers restored service. Users were able to sign up and register usernames, though full agent deployment required joining a queue.
What This Means for Crypto.com and Its Card Holders
For the 80+ million Crypto.com users and the company's card holders, the AI.com launch raises strategic questions. Marszalek runs both companies simultaneously. Resources, engineering talent, and executive attention are finite. A $70 million+ side venture into AI agents could either signal Crypto.com's evolution into a broader fintech-AI conglomerate or dilute focus from its core exchange and crypto card products.
There is no direct integration between AI.com and Crypto.com's exchange or card platform yet. The $70 million was paid in crypto, but there is no confirmed CRO token utility within AI.com. For now, the two products exist as separate entities under the same CEO.
That said, the intersection of AI agents and crypto payments is a logical convergence. Autonomous agents that can execute financial transactions, manage subscriptions, and handle shopping would benefit from programmable money. Stablecoin-funded smart wallets could become the rails that AI agents use to spend on behalf of users. Marszalek has not confirmed this roadmap, but the pieces fit.
The Broader AI Agent Race Heats Up
AI.com enters a market that barely existed 18 months ago but is now attracting billions. OpenAI's "Frontier" targets enterprise customers. Google's Gemini is embedding agents into Workspace. Anthropic is building tool-use capabilities into Claude. Apple is reportedly developing on-device agents for iOS.
The crypto angle gives Marszalek a niche. Traditional AI companies build agents that rely on centralized accounts and payment methods. A crypto-native agent platform could theoretically use self-custodial wallets for permissionless transactions, enabling agents to operate across borders without bank intermediaries.
Whether AI.com delivers on this vision or becomes another expensive marketing play remains to be seen. The domain alone guarantees type-in traffic from millions of people searching for AI tools. The Super Bowl ad reached over 100 million viewers. The platform is live and accepting users.
For crypto, the signal is clear: the industry's biggest operators are no longer content to stay in their lane. Exchanges are becoming media companies, banks, and now AI platforms. The question is whether spreading across multiple frontiers strengthens or fractures the companies building the next generation of financial infrastructure.
FAQ
How much did AI.com cost? Kris Marszalek paid $70 million in cryptocurrency, making it the most expensive publicly disclosed domain name sale in history.
What does AI.com do? AI.com lets users create autonomous AI agents that perform real-world tasks like managing calendars, sending messages, trading stocks, and building projects. Agents operate within user-defined permissions and share learned capabilities across the network.
Is AI.com connected to Crypto.com? Both are led by CEO Kris Marszalek, but they currently operate as separate products with no confirmed integration between AI.com's agent platform and Crypto.com's exchange or card products.
Who previously owned AI.com? The seller has not been publicly identified. The domain previously redirected to OpenAI's ChatGPT before Marszalek's purchase.
Overview
Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek spent $70 million in crypto to acquire AI.com, shattering the all-time domain name sales record, and debuted an autonomous AI agent platform during Super Bowl LX to over 100 million viewers. The platform lets users create personal agents that execute tasks across apps, manage workflows, and trade stocks, all within encrypted environments with user-controlled permissions. The launch positions Marszalek at the intersection of crypto and AI, though no direct integration with Crypto.com's exchange or card offerings has been announced. With OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and Amazon all competing in the AI agent space, AI.com's $70M+ debut is a high-stakes bet that crypto-native infrastructure can carve out a meaningful position in the autonomous AI race.
Recommended Reading
- Crypto.com Card Comparison and Review
- JPMorgan Slashes Coinbase Price Target by 27% to $290 as Crypto Weakness Clouds Q4 Earnings
- LayerZero Unveils Zero, a 2M TPS Blockchain Backed by Citadel, Ark Invest, DTCC, and Google Cloud
