It appears that the domain AI.com, which once redirected users to ChatGPT, now leads to the website for Elon Musk's newly formed AI company xAI, only several months after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman apparently bought the domain earlier this year. The change was first
spotted by Analytics India Magazine on Wednesday, leaving everybody guessing at what's going on behind the scenes. While the domain broker Saw.com more or less implied to
Mashable that OpenAI were the once-owners of AI.com in February, its ownership was never outright confirmed. This latest change of hands, meanwhile, has gone without so much as a peep.
Whoever bought it — a good guess is Musk — it couldn't have been cheap. Short domains are both few in number and prohibitively expensive, and it's likely that this purchase was upwards of several millions of dollars. As the richest man in the world with a
singular fondness for a certain letter of the alphabet, Musk already owns several one letter domains including X.ai and the even rarer X.com. We wouldn't put it past him to nab another one of these domain rarities, especially if it means getting a leg up on — or giving a big F-you to — his old chums at OpenAI.
Ever since the chatbot became a global and cultural sensation, Musk has amped up his criticisms of Altman and OpenAI, accusing its flagship product of
being "woke." The multi-billionaire magnate openly flirted with making an anti-"woke" AI, and in July announced his formation of X.ai, vowing in his classic bozo-philosophizing parlance, "
to understand the true nature of the universe."