HubSpot Co-founder Buys 'chat.com', Sells It For Over $10 Million and Donates 250k To Sal Khan and Khan Academy Back in March 2023, Shah took to Linkedin to share the-then newest and the most expensive domain purchase done by him, "The rumours are true, I bought the domain name chat.com."
By Paromita Gupta •
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Artificial intelligence is currently the new 'It' thing around the world, and everyone wants a piece of it. At least, HubSpot co-founder Dharmesh Shah does, proudly. Shah is an Indian-origin American entrepreneur who co-founded HubSpot in 2006 and also runs his own blog OnStartups.com, a community of over 900,000 subscribers.
Back in March 2023, Shah took to Linkedin to share the-then newest and the most expensive domain purchase done by him, "The rumours are true, I bought the domain name chat.com." While the exact financials were not disclosed by him, he mentioned in his later post that it was USD 10million+.
He also shared the real reason behind buying the hot AI-themed domain. "The reason I bought chat.com is simple: I think Chat-based UX (#ChatUX) is the next big thing in software. Communicating with computers/software through a natural language interface is much more intuitive. This is made possible by Generative A.I," his post also read.
Talking about his love and value for domain names (which dates back decades), he found chat.com simple, short, and on point. Another from his collection, WordPlay.com, has hit 150 million games played and 16 million users.
At the time of sharing the purchase news, Shah also made it clear that if he were to sell off the domain, he would be donating a percentage of the sale to Sal Khan and Khan Academy just because "I'm a huge fan." Interestingly, upon landing on chat.com, the audience would get redirected to Shah's purchase announcement post on LinkedIn.
On Friday, the HubSpot co-founder shared the news of the sale and shared, "I have sold it for more than I paid."
"As promised, I have taken $250k of the gains and donated to Sal Khan and Khan Academy to support their efforts to use A.I. to create personalized education at scale for the world. I passionately believe in Sal, Khan Academy and their mission," his post read.
