Buying Domain Names

In early February, I noticed that Kicks.com changed hands. The valuable one word .com domain name had been owned by Reflex, and transferred to a registrant called Domain Licenses Limited, which I believe is an entity that acquires and/or holds domain names on behalf of other companies.

I detected this Whois change with the help of the DomainTools Registrant Monitor.

Looks like https://t.co/d4ITR8l1j0 changed hands.

The domain name was previously registered at Namecheap and owned by Reflex. It is now registered at Com Laude and owned by Domain Licenses Limited.

The domain name does not yet resolve.

Spotted via @DomainTools.

— Elliot Silver (@DInvesting) February 3, 2025

HubSpot Founder Dharmesh Shah announced another domain name acquisition today. Dharmesh acquired OS.ai for $150,000. He announced the acquisition and shared his rationale for buying the domain name in a post on X:

LEAKED NEWS: I acquired the domain name os .ai for $150,000 (just saw the transaction reported on some online sources).

It’s the only two character domain name I own and one of the handful of .ai domains I’ve bought over the years.

I have some ideas on what kind of… pic.twitter.com/9g98fjD6Jo

— dharmesh (@dharmesh) March 12, 2025

The post received numerous responses, as Dharmesh invited people to share their ultra-premium domain names, offering to give a valuation from a new Agent.ai agent that is under development.

One response to the post didn’t include a domain name to evaluate. Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity, replied to Dharmesh to let him know he would like to buy OS.ai:

I have a $20/month paid account at OpenAi. I primarily use it to access ChatGPT – and I always use Chat.com to navigate to the website. One of the ways I use the platform is to generate keyword lists that I use to search for and register domain names.

Oftentimes, these keyword lists revolve around a specific topic, and I will append the lists to a different keyword. For instance, and this is just a made up example based on a current “hot” trend, I might ask Chat.com to generate a list of 100 popular scientific keywords that an 8th grader would know and then append AI.com to the end. I always give an example, such as MeteorAI.com in this case, so the tool can understand exactly what I am seeking.

The wholesale price of a .com domain name charged by Verisign (the .com registry operator) is approaching $10/year. I currently pay a little more than $11/year including the additional ICANN fee for my .com domain names at GoDaddy.

This morning, Namecheap and Spaceship Founder and CEO Richard Kirkendall announced that Spaceship is offering .com domain names for $4.98. There is no coupon or promo code necessary, and apparently there is no limit to how many domain names can be registered.

The promotion was posted on X:

We are doing some business with a local company that has Northern Lights in its branding. This is not a unique name, as it is shared with thousands of other companies. When we began working with them, I did a Whois search for NorthernLights.com to see who owned the domain name. Everyday dealings often spur me to do Whois searches as I continue to improve my portfolio.

Yesterday afternoon, Dommunity shared a list of companies that recently raised funds. Included on the list is a company called Northern Light that uses NorthernLight.com for its website:

Last year, I purchased more than 400 domain names. I didn’t spend as much on acquisitions as I have in previous years, but I increased the number of domain names in my inventory.

I looked through my acquisitions from 2024 and want to share my 5 favorite domain name acquisitions from last year. The list does not include a few of the nice names I bought and also re-sold within the year.

Here are my 5 favorite .com purchases: