Atom.com recently enabled its Instant Domain Appraisal tool to show amounts above $1 million. Prior to the change, the maximum appraisal amount was shown as > $1 million. This is a neat change for some who hold 7 or 8 figure assets, but it’s a bit of a vanity feature since an automated appraisal on a domain name at that level is unlikely to have much bearing on its actual sale price.

I am unsure when Atom made the change to its appraisal tool to show figures above the $1 million mark. I was recently using the tool to evaluate a couple of acquisition targets, and it capped at $1 million. When I checked again yesterday, I noticed the change.

When I started my career 20+ years ago, I was a Project Manager at a direct marketing agency and then I became a Marketing Manager at an insurance company. When people asked what I did for work, those two jobs were pretty easy to explain to people.

People have a more difficult time understanding what I do as a domain investor. Oftentimes, when I tell someone out of the domain/tech bubble what I do for work, they don’t really understand. Sometimes, people don’t even know what a domain name is.

I received a suspicious looking email yesterday, and I want to share some details. The email subject was “Atom x Embrace.com,” and it came from an email address using a .CO domain name that does not appear to be associated with the Atom.com platform.

Within the email, it had the following messaging:

“I’m Will from Atom. We run a marketplace and naming platform with 400,000+ brandable domains, plus appraisal, brokerage, and naming services.”

I’ve been a proponent of offering buyers the option to lease-to-own (LTO) my domain names. The primary benefit of an LTO deal is that it enables a fledgling business to secure a domain name today while paying for it as the business grows. It’s a win win if the seller gets the desired price.

Despite a reasonably good track record with LTO deals, I’ve been opting against offering an LTO option for my highest value domain names.

I look at Atom as a platform people use to find brand names with matching domain names. Because of this, I lean towards listing brandable types of domain names on Atom. I figure someone looking for a creative brand name will use Atom and my inventory should be shown on related terms.

When I am assessing domain names to buy, one of the things I think about is where I would list it for sale along with the value to an end user buyer. I think of Atom for the brandable types of domain names I think would be a good fit with the platform, especially with a custom logo.

In a recent DomainIQ domain monitor alert I received, I saw a well-known AI company’s domain name had a status change. After looking into it and seeing nothing of importance, I became curious about what domain registrars some of the most well-known AI companies use for their primary domain name.

I asked ChatGPT and Claude to give me a list of prominent AI companies. I then used the two lists along with my own observations to create a curated list of notable AI companies. This is not a definitive ranking of top AI companies, but a representative group of top AI companies I could use to look into where their primary domain names are registered.