10 YEAR OLD'S $100 DOMAIN SELLS FOR $70 MILLION

## The Accidental Fortune In 1993, at just 10 years old, Arsyan used his mother's credit card to register the domain for only $100. At that time, he did not foresee the current boom in artificial intelligence; the reason for the purchase was simply that "AI" happened to be the initials of his name. This seemingly inexplicable $100 charge even left his mother, who was unaware of the domain name, confused at one point. Think about that timing. The first ever domain name registered was Symbolics.com on March 15, 1985. Symbolics was a computer manufacturer and the domain was registered by the company for its website. Domain names first came to use in through the Domain Name System in 1983, with general public registration not being available until February 24, 1986. A 10-year-old Malaysian kid was buying domains when most adults had never heard of the internet. Malaysian tech entrepreneur Arsyan Ismail sold the domain AI.com for $70 million in April 2025. The web address was sold for $70 million, which is much higher than previous recorded domain sales. For instance, CarInsurance.com was bought in 2010 for $49.7 million. In 2019, Voice.com sold for $30 million. ## The Long Game Now 43, Arsyan is a well-known figure in the Malaysian tech scene. He began working on internet projects as a teenager and contributed to early social networking platforms like Kawanster and Friendster. He also served as a senior programmer at Nuffnang, a major blog advertising network, before founding his own company, 1337 Tech, in 2013. The domain was first listed for $100 million in March 2025 before the deal with Marszalek was reached a month later. Arsyan has since cautioned against over-negotiating or trying to "bait" wealthy investors. He noted that being too aggressive in a deal of this size can cause the buyer to walk away entirely. Kris Marszalek, the CEO of Crypto.com, acquired the domain in April 2025 through broker Larry Fischer. Marszalek plans to launch a consumer artificial intelligence platform under the AI.com brand, which is expected to debut during a Super Bowl LX commercial this weekend. The new site will feature personal AI agents designed to help users perform tasks such as sending messages, managing applications, and trading stocks. ## The Pattern Behind the Payoff This is not Marszalek's first domain power play. The purchase follows Marszalek's established playbook of betting heavily on category-defining brands. Crypto.com launched as Monaco in 2016 before acquiring its namesake domain for an estimated $5 to $10 million. The exchange later struck a $700 million deal to rename the Staples Center in Los Angeles to Crypto.com Arena and spent $100 million on a Matt Damon ad campaign. Reports indicate that the entire Ai.com transaction was settled using cryptocurrency. Kris Marszalek, the co-founder and CEO of Crypto.com, explained that the purchase was to prevent the brand from blending in with other AI businesses. Gartner reported that global spending on AI reached nearly $1.5 trillion in 2025. Arsyan held this domain through the dot-com boom, the dot-com crash, the rise of social media, mobile internet, and now the AI revolution. The move yielded a 70,000,000% return on a $100 investment made by the Malaysian entrepreneur in 1993. That is not luck. That is vision disguised as childhood curiosity. The real question: What other random purchases from the early internet are sitting in someone's portfolio, waiting for their moment?