OpenAI has acquired Chat.com, a domain that previously hosted an adult video chat service, and now redirects visitors to ChatGPT. The purchase was first spotted by PC Gamer. The exact price was not disclosed, but the domain's previous owner, Dharmesh Shah, who bought it for $15.5 million in 2023, said in a LinkedIn post that he sold it for significantly more than he paid.
Shah, responding to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's announcement on X, wrote that the new owner is “exactly who you'd think.” He added, referring to himself in the third person, “When he does sell a domain, it's almost never at a loss.”
An archived version of Chat.com shows it once hosted video chats in rooms named “Sexy,” “Fantasy,” “Tease,” and “Foot Fetish.” A notice on the defunct site read: “Unlike other free chat sites, all you have to do is click the Enter button and start chatting immediately,” with “no registration required and no need to download or install any software.”
The acquisition comes a week after OpenAI introduced “ChatGPT search,” a service the company said provides “fast, timely answers with links to relevant web sources, which you would have previously needed to go to a search engine for.”
How Chat.com will fit into OpenAI's long-term plans remains unclear. The company has faced criticism for unmemorable branding, and Chat.com is more concise than ChatGPT.
Editorial Notes