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Malaysian entrepreneur Arsyan Ismail has sold the premium domain AI.com for $70 million. The sale has fueled a viral claim that he bought the domain for around Rs. 300 as a 10-year-old in 1993. Available registration records and payment-history timelines do not support that origin story.
AI.com now routes to a consumer site. It invites visitors to reserve usernames for an “agentic AI” product. The relaunch drew an audience after the address appeared in advertising during Super Bowl LX on February 8, 2026. Official event information lists that date and underscores the broadcast’s scale.
Kris Marszalek, the chief executive of Crypto.com, has described the purchase as a strategic branding move. In public comments, he framed a short, direct name as protection against copycat positioning as competition grows. The transaction reportedly used cryptocurrency for settlement, which aligns with the buyer’s core business.
Two-letter .com domains remain scarce, with only 676 possible combinations. That constraint makes the category attractive to brands and long-term investors. AI.com also aligns with a common abbreviation for artificial intelligence, which strengthens recall in search and advertising.
AI.com’s creation date traces back to May 4, 1993. Domain registration data lists that date. That fact has helped the Rs. 300 story spread since it shows the name has existed on the public web. The key question concerns who owned it then and how a purchase could have happened.
The viral narrative says a child used a credit card online in 1993. Payment infrastructure makes that unlikely. Visa and Mastercard agreed on a security standard for internet card payments in 1996. They planned services for later that year. That timeline weakens claims of a routine online checkout for a domain in 1993.
Industry discussions instead point to a much later acquisition by Ismail. Multiple accounts place his purchase around 2021 through a brokered transaction. The domain had sat within portfolio ownership for years. Those reports also indicate that the domain changed hands quietly, which fits common practice for high-value digital assets.
Also Read: Rise of Web3 Domains: Are They Worth the Investment?
The headline number remains the central verified development. The reported US$70 million price would rank among the largest publicly disclosed domain sales. It also exceeds earlier widely cited benchmarks for single-domain deals, which usually fell in the tens of millions of dollars.
Ismail has kept a low public profile. Available biographical information places him in Malaysia’s technology scene over the past two decades. The sale highlights a different pathway to wealth in the digital economy. Investors can build value through ownership of scarce online identifiers and then exit when demand peaks in global markets.
