Crypto.com founder buys ai.com for record $70 million: FT

Kris Marszalek joined the AI manufacture with autonomous agents and a Super Bowl advertisement that concisely sidelined the website.

Feb 9, 2026, 11:29 a.m.

Kris Marszalek, the laminitis and CEO of crypto speech Crypto.com, spent $70 cardinal to bargain ai.com, the highest publically disclosed terms paid for a website domain, the FT reported.

The acquisition signals the executive's determination into artificial intelligence, a assemblage that reached astir $1.5 trillion successful worldwide spending successful 2025, according to Gartner. The momentum volition intensify this year, with Bloomberg reporting that the 4 largest U.S. tech giants alone, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft, program to put a combined $650 cardinal successful AI infrastructure this year.

The transaction, finalized successful April 2025, was conducted wholly successful cryptocurrency, the FT said successful its study connected Friday, citing Larry Fischer of GetYourDomain.com, who brokered the transaction. The terms tag much than doubled the erstwhile $30 cardinal grounds held by Block.one’s 2019 acquisition of Voice.com. Block.one is the proprietor of CoindDesk's parent, Bullish (BLSH). Marszalek spent $12 cardinal to get crypto.com successful 2018.

Ai.com announced the debut of a user level featuring autonomous AI agents. Unlike accepted chatbots, these agents are designed to run connected a user’s behalf — executing tasks specified arsenic trading stocks, managing calendars and automating workflows. Marszalek said the level aims to beryllium the "front doorway to AGI" done a decentralized network.

“We are astatine a cardinal displacement successful AI’s improvement arsenic we rapidly determination beyond basal chats to AI agents really getting things done for humans,” said Marszalek. “Our imaginativeness is simply a decentralized web of billions of agents who self-improve and stock these improvements with each other.”

The level announced its debut with a Super Bowl LX commercialized connected Sunday, generating a surge successful postulation that crashed the website for respective hours. Writing on X connected Monday, Marszalek cited "insane postulation levels" from the 30-second ad, noting that portion the squad had prepared for scale, the measurement of involvement was unprecedented.