Malaysian entrepreneur Arsyan Ismail sold the premium domain AI.com to Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek for $70 million in April 2025, marking the highest publicly disclosed domain sale ever.
The domain gained global attention during Super Bowl LX with Crypto.com’s “agentic AI” platform, highlighting the rising strategic value of short AI-related web addresses.
Viral claims that Ismail bought AI.com as a 10-year-old in 1993 were disputed by records showing he actually acquired it in 2021 through a domain brokerage before reselling it at a major profit.
One of the largest publicly disclosed domain sales in internet history has been achieved by a Malaysian tech entrepreneur, Arsyan Ismail, by selling AI.com for $70 million (about ₹634 crore) to Kris Marszalek, chief executive of Crypto.com, in April 2025. The deal was reportedly settled entirely in cryptocurrency, making the actual sum still dependent on the market situation. It has set a record in domain sales by surpassing the previous record of the $49.7 million sale of CarInsurance.com in 2010.
Crypto.com launched a new “agentic AI” platform under the AI.com brand during Super Bowl LX, pushing the domain to global attention. The platform would promote personal artificial-intelligence assistants capable of messaging, executing trades, and handling tasks across apps. With competition growing intense in the AI sector, Marszalek shared how acquiring a category-defining name was essential to prevent the company from being “commoditised.”
Following this, claims regarding the purchase of the domain in 1993 at age 10 for $100 using his mother’s credit card went viral on social media, pointing towards a decades-long investment that turned out to be one of the greatest returns in tech history. However, reports point towards a different story as per domain registration records and brokerage data.
As per the record, AI.com was originally registered on May 4, 1993, which was some days after the entrance of the World Wide Web into the public domain. There was extremely limited internet access in Malaysia, along with no operational online card payments during that period. It shows that Ismail acquired the domain in 2021 through SAW.com from Future Media Architects, Inc, which was owned by Kuwaiti businessman Thunayan Khalid Al-Ghanim. The purchase price was not disclosed, but the resale still represents a major profit, although it was short-term.
It is a two-letter domain, which is considered one of the rarest digital assets on the internet, with only 676 possible combinations in the .com namespace. AI.com has evolved into one of the most commercially valuable web addresses available as artificial intelligence rises into a global industry. Crypto.com has now pushed the website address into a gateway brand by using the domain to anchor its push into AI-driven services. A growing trend in tech is placing premium domains as long-term brand infrastructure rather than just marketing add-ons, reflecting the company’s strategy.
Arsyan Ismail has been active in Southeast Asia’s internet ecosystem for years while maintaining a relatively low public profile. He worked at Nuffnang and Friendster, after which he went on to establish 1337 Tech. His professional listings also show that he has worked independently with OpenAI since early 2025. He was an early supporter of digital assets and was even reportedly offered a whopping amount of $100 million after listing AI.com for sale. He then finalised the deal of $70 million, advising entrepreneurs not to “over-negotiate with a billionaire.”
(SY)
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