Crypto.com CEO, Kris Marszalek, has pushed the boundaries of tech marketing and his company beyond crypto and straight into the heart of the artificial intelligence boom. The cryptocurrency exchange platform has purchased the premium AI.com domain for $70 million, paid entirely in cryptocurrency. This makes it the highest price ever paid for a public domain sale and marks the company’s entry into the AI race.
Apart from the staggering domain deal, what makes this launch especially captivating is that instead of unveiling it through a traditional press release, the company chose the Super Bowl to introduce the new consumer facing AI agent platform. Every year, the Super Bowl becomes more than just a sporting event. It turns into one of the largest advertising stages in the world, where companies spend millions of dollars to capture a few seconds of global attention.
Some of the most memorable tech adverts over the years have come through this stage, including the now legendary Computer.com commercial during the dot-com boom of 2000, which highlighted the internet’s arrival. More than two decades later, the same platform is being used to signal the next technological breakthrough.
The debut of AI.com marks a bold cross-industry move from one of the most prominent figures in the space and showcases how companies in the digital assets industry are now positioning themselves at the forefront of mainstream tech innovation.
A Record-Breaking Domain Deal
The price tag. This is the main reason why the purchase of AI.com stands out. At $70 million, the deal is now widely acknowledged as the largest publicly disclosed domain sale in history, going past previous headline-grabbing names like Voice.com, CarInsuranc.com and Chat.com. The purchase and Super Bowl launch was announced on X by Marszalek on February 6 stating that had been purchased in April last year and a team was being built since. The $70 million price tag was then confirmed by broker, Larry Fischer, in a LinkedIn post.
This record deal goes to show how important premium internet real estate in the age of AI has become, where owning a simple yet memorable name plays a crucial role in brand recall value, trust and long term positioning.
Just as significant as the price tag, however, is the method through which the transaction was settled. Having been completely purchased with cryptocurrency, this reinforces the growing real world use of digital assets far beyond trading. Completing a deal of this size and magnitude in crypto sends a clear message that on-chain payments are increasingly viable for large, real world transactions.
Super Bowl Spot Amplified the Play
The launch of AI.com during Super Bowl 60 ensured the announcement reached one of the largest television audiences across the world. The 30-second advertisement leaned heavily into futuristic imagery with the clear message that “AGI is coming”. Viewers were also encouraged to claim personal handles with examples like AI.com/Sam and AI.com/Elon appearing on screen. This was a clear message to position the platform as a mainstream consumer product rather than a niche tech tool.
AI.com is designed as a consumer focused platform built around users being able to generate personal AI agents in a few clicks that can automate daily tasks, manage apps, organize workflows and also handle complex projects. The Super Bowl advert sparked immediate curiosity which led to the website crashing briefly due to the heavy traffic. Nevertheless, this was a clear sign of the massive attention the launch generated and the ad shows the company’s ambition to reach a wider audience from day one.
Why This Matters for Crypto and The Bigger Tech Narrative
The launch of AI.com is a notable moment for the crypto industry as a whole because it blends two worlds that have often developed in parallel. A crypto CEO using a Super Bowl commercial for a launch is firstly indicative of how far the industry has come to the mainstream. What’s more notable in this launch, however, is the massive deal being done completely via cryptocurrency. This sends a strong signal of confidence and credibility in the fact that digital assets are a practical way of settling transactions at scale.
By launching a consumer AI platform, the company is stepping into one of the fastest growth sectors in tech and aligning itself with the next major wave of innovation. This signals a shift in how crypto firms want to position themselves, not only as financial platforms, but as technology companies capable of building products for everyday users. It also mirrors a growing trend in the industry where blockchain, AI, and automation are increasingly seen as complementary technologies rather than separate sectors.
For the crypto industry, moves like this help expand visibility beyond financial markets and into mainstream technology conversations, reinforcing the idea that the sector is evolving into a broader innovation ecosystem rather than a standalone niche.
