In a move that has sent ripples through both the tech and advertising worlds, Crypto.com co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek has set a new record with the $70 million acquisition of the AI.com domain—paid entirely in cryptocurrency. The purchase, finalized in April 2025 and announced publicly on February 6, 2026, is now the largest publicly disclosed domain sale on record, according to reporting from the Financial Times and The Block.
The deal eclipsed even the most eye-popping domain sales of the past, including CarInsurance.com’s $49.7 million price tag in 2010, VacationRentals.com’s $35 million in 2007, and Voice.com’s $30 million in 2019. Broker Larry Fischer, who facilitated the transaction, described the opportunity as nearly unparalleled: “With assets like AI.com, there are no substitutes. When one becomes available, the opportunity may never present itself again,” he told the Financial Times.
The seller, Arsyan Ismail, had listed the domain for a staggering $100 million in March 2025, but Marszalek closed the deal at $70 million—still a sum that left industry watchers stunned. Marszalek himself seemed unfazed by the scale of the investment, telling the Financial Times, “If you take a long-term view—10 to 20 years—[AI] is going to be one of the greatest technological waves of our lifetime.”
But the story doesn’t end with an expensive domain purchase. Marszalek, who already owns Crypto.com and once spent $700 million to secure the naming rights for the Los Angeles Staples Center (now Crypto.com Arena), had bigger plans brewing. The AI.com domain was to serve as the launchpad for a new consumer AI platform, with its debut timed to one of the most-watched events on the planet: Super Bowl LX.
During the fourth quarter of Super Bowl 60 on February 9, 2026, AI.com aired a 30-second commercial urging viewers to create a handle on the website. The ad promised a personal AI agent capable of organizing work, sending messages, executing actions across apps, building projects, and even trading stocks. The platform’s differentiator, according to an AI.com press release, would be its agents’ ability to autonomously build out missing features and capabilities to complete real-world tasks—improvements that would be shared across millions of agents on the network, increasing utility for all users.
“We are at a fundamental shift in AI's evolution as we rapidly move beyond basic chats to AI agents actually getting things done for humans,” Marszalek said in the release, underscoring the ambition behind the project.
But as millions of viewers flocked to the site in response to the Super Bowl ad, AI.com experienced an unexpected baptism by fire. The sudden surge of traffic crashed the website, leaving would-be users frustrated and voicing their complaints on social media and even in the ADWEEK newsroom. Marszalek took to X (formerly Twitter) to address the situation, posting, “Insane traffic levels. We prepared for scale, but not for THIS,” punctuating his message with three fire emojis. The site was eventually restored, allowing users to sign up and begin creating their personal AI agents as promised.
The AI.com launch was hardly alone in leveraging the Super Bowl’s massive audience to promote artificial intelligence. According to iSpot, 23% of advertisers—15 out of 66 ads—during Super Bowl 60 spotlighted AI and AI companies. Giants like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google all took their shot at capturing the public’s imagination, while Squarespace encouraged viewers to claim their own domains, echoing AI.com’s strategy.
Yet, despite the cacophony of AI advertising, Marszalek’s approach stood out for its sheer scale and audacity. Not only did he spend a record-breaking sum on the domain, but he also doubled down on a category-defining brand, much as he did with Crypto.com. The exchange, which launched as Monaco in 2016 before acquiring its now-famous domain for an estimated $5 to $10 million, has since grown to claim more than 150 million retail users and roughly $1.5 billion in annual revenue, according to company statements cited by The Block.
“When we started Crypto.com there were around a thousand different exchanges, and we somehow managed to make it work,” Marszalek told the Financial Times. “We will make this work one way or another.”
The AI.com platform promises robust security as well, with user data encrypted using individual keys. This focus on privacy is poised to be a selling point as consumers become more aware—and wary—of how their information is handled by AI services. The platform’s autonomous agents are designed not just to perform tasks, but to learn and adapt, sharing improvements across the network for the benefit of all users.
The timing of the launch was no accident. Crypto.com had just spun out its prediction markets business into a standalone app called OG, also coinciding with Super Bowl activity. This flurry of moves reflects Marszalek’s penchant for high-stakes, high-visibility bets on the future of technology and branding.
Of course, not everyone is convinced that such mega-dollar domain purchases will pay off in the long run. The history of expensive domains is littered with both spectacular successes and cautionary tales—Sex.com, for example, sold twice for over $13 million, but its second owner went bankrupt trying to monetize it. Still, Marszalek appears undeterred. He told the Financial Times he has already received what he called “an absolutely insane amount of money” in offers for the domain but has no intention of selling. For him, the value lies in owning a digital asset with near-universal recognition and the potential to shape the next wave of AI adoption.
As the dust settles from Super Bowl 60 and the world digests a new era of AI-powered branding, the question remains: will AI.com become the household name Marszalek envisions, or will it serve as another chapter in the annals of tech’s most audacious gambles? For now, with the website back online and users signing up in droves, Marszalek’s bet looks as bold as ever—one that could define the next decade of consumer technology.