Faraday Future has acquired the valuable FF.com domain name, according to an announcement made this morning in the company’s newsletter. If you visit FaradayFuture.com, you will see that the domain name is now forwarding directly to FF.com. For those who aren’t aware, Faraday Future is a car company focusing on electric vehicles.
Back in September of 2015, Jamie Zoch mentioned via Twitter that the FF.com domain name may have been sold. The FF.com domain name had been owned by Bank of America prior to its sale. The FF.com Whois information is private.
In its newsletter today, Faraday Future told recipients the following:
“Today, we launched our updated website at a brand new web address – now available at FF.com.
This will be our new digital headquarters, featuring a more in-depth look at our technology, our processes, and the talented people who make FF what it is. Learn why our modular approach is so unique, apply for a place on our team at our careers page, and follow our journey on our blog, FutureSight.”
It is a bit unclear to me whether the company is completely branding as FF. References to FF are found throughout the website, although the home page’s meta title still says Faraday Future. The company’s Twitter page notes the new FF.com website but still says “Faraday Future” as its name. The profile section refers to itself as FF though: “Based in California, FF will deliver seamlessly connected electric vehicles & future mobility solutions.”
The FF.com domain name also has an interesting history. FF.com had been owned by a company called First Franklin Financial Corp., which was acquired by Merrill Lynch. During the financial crisis, Merrill Lynch was acquired by Bank of America, and the domain name was likely one of the assets included in the deal.
My guess is that this was a high seven or perhaps an eight figure domain name deal, assuming it was an outright acquisition (I don’t know if the two companies have a relationship that could have yielded a more favorable deal). Facebook famously acquired the FB.com domain name from the Farm Bureau for $8.5 million, and FF.com is a better domain name. In addition, based on this rebranding, it seems that Faraday Future needed this domain name, so they may have paid more.
Perhaps we will learn about the cost of the domain name in a future stock filing.
Thank you to Braden Pollock for sharing this news with me.
Nice name, we are brokering a very similar one.
IMHO it’s a 7 figures deal. 🙂
Faraday Future is a Chinese-backed company, Chinese billionaire Jia Yueting is one of the founders.
Jia is the CEO and founder of online video site Leshi TV, a company described as China’s Netflix.
As you correctly mentioned, FF.com was owned by First Franklin Financial Corp., a home mortgage lender that specialized in subprime loans, which was acquired in 2006 by Merrill Lynch, in turn purchased in 2008 by BOFA.
First Franklin imploded during last real estate bubble burst.
oh how i wish i would bought just one LL.com 15 years ago..
I’ve been following FF’s launch for a while now. They have lots of money to blow: super factory, thousands of hires, lavish promotions etc. Comes as no surprise they bought the .com. No product yet. Reminds me of the dot com boom of the late 90s.
No! We are FF!