When tech entrepreneur Ian Leaman sought to acquire a web domain for his new artificial intelligence business, he was faced with a costly dilemma.
He determined that the domain name Pantry.ai hadn't been taken, so the New Yorker registered it for his business in December of last year.
Sadly, the domain name had already been taken by someone else a while ago, so Mr Leaman had to contact that person to explore the possibility of a purchase.
Mr Leaman states that he initially proffered $2,000 [£1,647] and the other party would not settle for any less than $12,000. Even when the offer was increased to $7,000, the other party remained firm on the $12,000 figure.
We settled on $12,000 as long as it could be paid off in installments.
Mr Leaman has expressed his delight at becoming the proprietor of Pantry.ai. Although the transaction was rather costly, he is content to have secured an unforgettable domain name featuring "a powerful noun", which has become more and more difficult to acquire.
That $12,000 figure may appear high, however it is on the inexpensive side of the fees currently charged for domain names that include AI. This is particularly true if AI is the suffix - located after the dot, like .com or .co.uk.
A report revealed that a particular web address, npc.ai , sold for a staggering $250,000 in the current year, while another, service.ai, was transacted at $127,500. Such extraordinary prices are a consequence of the massive interest in the AI industry and new technologies.
To begin the process of acquiring a domain name, one must first seek out a domain registrar. There are more than a thousand of these accredited by an organization known as The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names.
Visit a registrar website and type in the desired name. The website will inform you if the name is already registered or if it is available.
If the website address is unregistered, one can pay a nominal cost - ranging from £15 annually - to claim it.
If the domain name you want is already taken, you will need to reach out to a domain brokerage, which helps transfer website domain names between buyers and sellers.
The broker will reach out to the current owner for a fee to ask if they are interested in selling and then to help facilitate the purchase, if so.
Joe Udemme, who is the CEO of Name Experts, the US-located domain brokerage, reports that in the last twelve months, there has been an upsurge in demand for websites with AI-derived titles.
He states that the .ai suffixes go for low five-digit to sometimes even the six-digit range, and that the ideal choice for businesses is something short and distinctive.
Escrow.com reported to the BBC that the collective worth of domain names including "AI" had increased to $20m in August, which is a jump from the $7m that had been estimated in the same period of the prior year.
Meanwhile, Afternic, a third brokerage, reports that the phrase "AI" is now the second most popular word in website addresses that have been sold through its platform.
Find out more about artificial intelligence by reading additional stories.com
Start-ups as well as those aiming to make a financial profit are acquiring AI domains, according to Matt Barrie, the chief executive of Escrow.com.
He acknowledges that a domain name speculator purchased a website name that pertained to AI for $300,000 and several months later sold it for an unbelievable price of $1.5m. He further explained that there are some people in the business who understand that businesses like to have the most attractive branding.
Getting a "short and clean" website address can be costly for AI businesses, but it is beneficial in terms of enabling them to rank higher on internet search results and be more easily remembered by consumers. Mr Barrie expresses this sentiment.
Mr Barrie states that a top domain may be viewed as a perpetual savings on one's marketing costs.
Accoding to Mr Udemme, AI corporations often prefer having website addresses that consist of one word followed by .ai.
He states that using only one word is like having digital real estate along the beachfront - once it is constructed, there is no way for anyone to construct anything in front of it, only behind it.
Mr Leaman attests to preferring Pantry.ai to PantryAI.com. His business is leveraging AI to aid manufacturers of consumer goods in precisely estimating the amount of products they'll have to produce for upcoming orders.
Andrew Rosener, chief executive of domain name brokerage MediaOptions, affirms that the trend of AI-related website addresses being snapped up quickly is likely to stay in place.
AI doesn't just represent the same type of passing fad as we saw with cryptocurrency due to the influx of investment money, and the fact that companies wish to demonstrate to their clients and vendors how up-to-date their systems are with AI.
Mr Rosener cautions companies against shelling out for websites with "AI" in the title just because of the moment's popularity. "I wouldn't advise clients to spend excessive amounts for a domain with 'AI' if it is not the core of what their business does," he commented.
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