FULL INTERVIEW: Why I Spent $70M to buy AI.com

Summary

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FULL INTERVIEW: Why I Spent $70M to Buy AI.com

Podcast: TBPN
Hosts: John Coogan & Jordi Hays
Guest: Victor Shaburov (entrepreneur and domain investor)
Date: February 11, 2026

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Overview

In this engaging episode, John Coogan and Jordi Hays sit down with Victor Shaburov, the mastermind behind the record-breaking $70 million acquisition of the AI.com domain and the viral Super Bowl ad launch. Shaburov discusses the strategic thinking, high-stakes decisions, and long-term vision driving AI.com, reflecting on past successes—including the purchase of crypto.com—and elaborates on his approach to consumer AI products. The conversation is candid, punctuated by honest insights into building tech giants, navigating domain deals, and bringing new products to millions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Origin Story of AI.com ([00:18]-[01:44])

• How Victor Discovered AI.com

  • Victor bought a different domain, and the broker informed him AI.com was on the market.
  • “I immediately recognized the importance of it and just jumped on it, got on the phone the same day, got the deal done… there were some ups and downs, but we managed to get this done.” — Victor Shaburov [00:40]

• His Previous Big Bet: Crypto.com

  • Shaburov reminisces buying crypto.com for $12 million during the 2018 crypto bear market—a bold move at the time.
  • “It was about a third of our capital and it was bang in the middle of the 2018 bear market. So people were discussing whether crypto is going to survive or not.” — Victor Shaburov [01:18]

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2. The Vision for AI.com ([02:08]-[02:50])

• Initial Purpose Behind the Purchase
  • Even before a product existed, the goal was clear: an AI-powered, "chief-of-staff" assistant for billions—proactive, context-aware, life-management.
  • “We want to build a consumer product. We believe that you have 4 billion people having personal assistants that should play the role of kind of a chief of staff for your entire life… The vision didn’t change from day one.” — Victor Shaburov [02:08]

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3. Product Development & Integration Lessons ([02:50]-[04:15])

• Adapting to Technology Shifts

  • Building began in mid-2025; initial efforts struggled until advances like Opus 4.5 and Cloudbot changed the game.
  • Key challenges: intuitive setup, serious security/data privacy concerns, reducing technical friction for consumers.

• Imminent Launch

  • “We are combining everything that we’ve built over the last, say, eight months… we are starting doing this tomorrow.” — Victor Shaburov [03:12]

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4. The Super Bowl Ad Gamble ([04:15]-[07:18])

• Super Bowl Ad as Global Stage

  • Victor purchased the ad spot early with only a domain and idea, products followed much later.
  • “We only have one shot to get this done correctly… These things need to be able to develop an emotional connection with the product in order for this to be sticky and retentive.” — Victor Shaburov [05:04]

• Last-Minute Decision Making

  • Only weeks before the Super Bowl did AI.com decide to use the spot for the new product—and the ad truly was made on the fly.

• Technical Challenges and Massive Spike

  • 300,000 sign-ups on launch day, some site outages, but generally a technical win under extreme pressure.
  • “We’ve got a great DevOps team… there were intermittent problems for some people, but largely it held up. So I think fundamentally it’s the name and… curiosity.” — Victor Shaburov [07:49]

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5. The Consumer AI Opportunity ([08:25]-[10:21])

• Finding the Consumer “Killer App”

  • Discussion about break-out moments for AI assistants—making them genuinely useful, sticky, and intuitive.
  • “Fundamentally you’re able to actually get stuff done right now. So that’s a big differentiating factor for the user experience… The fact that every single person on earth is going to have an assistant of this opens up new interactions…” — Victor Shaburov [09:02]

• Long-Term, User-Led Product Iteration

  • Shaburov believes in rapidly iterating based on feedback, just as in his crypto days, but with a far bigger potential market.

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6. Open Source vs. Business Integrations ([10:21]-[12:04])

• Open Ecosystem Challenges
  • The complexity of building universal AI that integrates across platforms—balancing open-source power vs. the need to cut business deals (e.g., with Meta/WhatsApp).
  • “We want to stand on the side of the consumer and help them make these technical choices, make sure that their data is safe… and that they can do what they want to do…” — Victor Shaburov [11:31]

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7. Onboarding, Privacy, and Gamification ([12:04]-[13:37])

• User Concerns about Privacy

  • Hosts share feedback about the Google login requirement; Victor acknowledges friction and says they’re trying to make onboarding simple while maintaining privacy.

• First Use Case Ambitions

  • The aim is to get users to experience value pronto—ideally by syncing their email/calendar to see the assistant’s power.
  • “You need to gamify it until such point where users are deep enough that it actually gives them the feeling of like wow, this is special, this is different.” — Victor Shaburov [12:53]

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8. The AI.com Domain Saga and the $500M+ Offer ([14:02]-[15:10])

• Backstory

  • Original AI.com owner held the domain for 30 years; there was a bidding war, with big companies interested.

• Turning Down a Massive Profit

  • After closing, Victor received an offer of “$500 million plus,” possibly even $1B.
  • “I think I could have pushed it to a billion if I wanted to, but I didn’t want to. So I think you guys need to understand I am pot committed. I love it.” — Victor Shaburov [14:42]

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9. Future Plans: Foundation Models? ([15:37]-[16:07])

• AI Infrastructure

  • Focus is on product scaling and building user trust before considering building their own foundational models.

• Long-Term Commitment

  • “Our users don’t really care about which model runs in the background as long as the job gets done and their data is safe. But once you get to a certain scale, who knows?” — Victor Shaburov [15:43]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Timing is really important in life skill. Timing and luck, combination of these things.” — Victor Shaburov [06:08]
• “You need to solve a whole litany of issues to make it consumer friendly. Like how do you set it up without being technical? The security issues around your data. Those are serious, serious issues when you want to bring something to the mass market.” — Victor Shaburov [03:12]
• “The conviction to turn down what would have been turning 70 million into 500 or a billion in 24 hours is admirable.” — Tech Podcast Host [15:10]

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Fun, Lighthearted Moments

• Hosts joke about being “the mayor of Los Angeles” by virtue of the crypto.com arena naming rights ([16:38])
• Chris Dixon recommends Victor attend Lakers games or even better, a monster truck rally at the arena ([16:54]-[17:07])

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Important Segment Timestamps (MM:SS)

• [00:40] — Victor’s discovery & acquisition of AI.com
• [01:18] — The story behind crypto.com
• [02:08] — The product vision for AI.com personal assistant
• [03:12] — Breakthroughs with Opus 4.5 and cloudbot
• [04:45] — Deciding to go big with a Super Bowl ad
• [07:18] — Handling 300k signups and technical challenges
• [09:02] — How AI assistants can finally “get stuff done”
• [14:42] — Turning down a giant post-acquisition offer (“pot committed”)
• [15:43] — On the eventuality of training their own foundation model

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Summary

This episode gives a rare, inside look at the high-stakes world of premium domain deals and ambitious tech launches. Victor Shaburov’s journey—from the nerve-wracking $12M purchase of crypto.com, through the $70M AI.com saga, all the way to a game-changing Super Bowl launch—illustrates what it means to think and build at internet scale. It's a story of vision, timing, technical boldness, and the belief that the next 10 years of AI will far outstrip everything we’ve seen before.

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For listeners interested in startup strategy, domain investing, and the cutting edge of consumer AI, this interview is essential.

Transcript

[Chris Dixon]

Chris, good to meet you.

[Tech Podcast Host]

What's happening?

[Victor Shaburov]

Nice to meet you guys. How are you? Thanks.

[Chris Dixon]

I love the background. The logo is looking great.

[Tech Podcast Host]

Is that real or is that AI?

[Victor Shaburov]

It's totally made up.

[Tech Podcast Host]

Well, I was like, it feels, feels pretty quick to have, you know, the actual design manufacturing.

[Chris Dixon]

It takes time. Well, take us through the thesis for AI dot com.

[Tech Podcast Host]

Yeah, wait, before we, yeah, before we get into the super bowl, like, let's, let's maybe rewind to maybe. Probably a year ago, you see a domain on the market. I think they had been trying to sell it for a while, I imagine. And you came in as a buyer, but walk us through that whole journey.

[Victor Shaburov]

Yeah, I bought another domain and the agent who was brokering this told me about AI.com being in a process of being sold, if you will. So I immediately recognized the importance of it and just jumped on it, got on the phone the same day, got the deal done. We shook hands. There were some ups and downs through the process, but we managed to get this done.

[Tech Podcast Host]

You've had some good success buying iconic domains. What did you pay for crypto.com? have you ever disclosed that?

[Victor Shaburov]

I don't think we ever did, but we paid $12 million. I would argue that that was a more difficult decision, if you will. We were a small company back then. $12 million was about a third of our capital and it was bang in the middle of the 2018 bear market. So people were discussing whether crypto is going to survive or not.

[Tech Podcast Host]

Yeah, the person selling it to you was like, probably like, this guy is an idiot. Of course, of course you ended up, ended up looking the Staples Center.

[Chris Dixon]

I drive by it all the time.

[Tech Podcast Host]

Okay, so yeah, you see this domain is on the market. Do you have any idea what you wanted to do with it at the time of acquisition? Or did you just think that, hey, this AI thing is probably pretty important. Maybe I should own AI.com?

[Victor Shaburov]

We, we were building products ever since ChatGPT launched and playing with consumer facing side, but also internal tools. So constant experimentation. And the vision from day one was we want to build a consumer product. We believe that you have 4 billion people having personal assistants that should play the role of kind of a chief of staff for your entire life with great context, being proactive, getting things done for you rather than just chatting. So the vision didn't change from day one.

[Tech Podcast Host]

And then, yeah, I guess fast forward. How did you, how did you process before we get into the kind of super bowl and that whole strategy, how did you, how did you process Kind of the Open Claw launch. It sounds like you guys are integrating the. Are you building those patterns? Yeah, at least some of those patterns. Are you kind of forking the project? Talk about that.

[Victor Shaburov]

So as we started building this product about mid-2025, it was never just. It just didn't click. It didn't have this. You couldn't pass the uncanny valley. And I think the pivotal moments where we started seeing these changes. Opus 4.5 release, it started working much, much better. And we obviously saw cloudbot going live and adding some elements of their architecture to it. I think it gets it done in terms of how it feels as a product. You just need to solve a whole litany of issues to make it consumer friendly. Like how do you set it up without being technical? The security issues around your data. Those are serious, serious issues when you want to bring something to the mass market. So I think we are combining everything that we've built over the last, say, eight months into something that we can roll out to the end users. And we are starting doing this tomorrow. Wow.

[Tech Podcast Host]

Tomorrow. Okay, before we get into the product and kind of more of the vision, let's fast forward again to the, to the super bowl specifically. How did that, how did that all come together? It felt like it was coming together quickly, but we know we ran a much, much smaller ad, we ran a regional ad. You do have to lock these things in ahead of time, but walk us through the process of kind of preparing and then experiencing the Super Bowl Sunday.

[Victor Shaburov]

So I bought the domain in April. The deal closed and we got the domain successfully. So I'm like, okay, we need to launch this and it deserves a global stage. And in May, we were one of the first companies to actually by the spot.

[Chris Dixon]

Oh, no way.

[Tech Podcast Host]

Wow.

[Victor Shaburov]

At that time we had just the domain and idea what do we want to do with it. But the product didn't exist. And you know, I, I know that we only have one shot to get this done correctly and I didn't want to release the product until I felt that it's there for the end user. These things need to be able to develop an emotional connection with the product in order for this to be sticky and retentive.

[Chris Dixon]

So.

[Victor Shaburov]

I only made a decision that we actually going to pull the trigger on this a couple of weeks ago. That's why the ad felt like it was quickly put together. It was quickly put together.

[Tech Podcast Host]

Wait, so you bought, so you bought the super bowl spot?

[Chris Dixon]

Did you put it down, crypto.com if.

[Tech Podcast Host]

You wanted to, yeah. What was the idea? Like hey, if we don't run it for AI.com, we have the crypto.com ad ready. We'll just run that.

[Victor Shaburov]

We have the crypto business, we have a prediction markets business. There's always some level of optionality, right? But this is the moment to run an AI ad, as you guys have seen. And timing is really important in life skill. Timing and luck, combination of these things.

[Chris Dixon]

It's a good reference.

[Tech Podcast Host]

Okay, so you put the ad together in effectively two weeks, and then you run it. And what happens then? Because I think you got the attention from buying the world's most expensive domain ever. Then you got the attention of like, hey, there's this new AI product I've never heard of with a crazy domain running a Super bowl ad should pay attention to it. And then you got a whole nother kind of amount of attention from people being like, wait, I just got an ad for AI.com and I landed on the website and it's not. And the website's down. So what kind of happened? Did you spent the 70 million on the domain, the 8 million on the spot, and then you didn't have enough to host it or what happened? I'm assuming a lot of people got through, but certainly a lot of people got stuck as well.

[Victor Shaburov]

I think we are happy with the outcome. Okay, we had about 300,000 people signing up.

[Chris Dixon]

Wow.

[Tech Podcast Host]

Wow. Let's go. We get the gong. Can we get the gong? 300,000 signups.

[Chris Dixon]

There's been a lot of big numbers.

[Tech Podcast Host]

That's a big number for one day. For one day. But on a more serious note, how did you, how do you even prepare for that amount of traffic? Like, how do you. How do you. What was going on in the war room, guys?

[Victor Shaburov]

You know, we've. We're on a platform that is used to spikes, right? And we've got a great DevOps team and we forgot all the stuff that you usually would expect, auto scaling and whatnot. So there were intermittent problems for some people, but largely it held up. So I think fundamentally it's the name and the fact that there is a certain element of curiosity there. And we designed it in a. It was a very simple call to action, go and sign up. So I think it worked. Yeah.

[Chris Dixon]

Talk to me about consumer AI. ChatGPT has broken through Gemini and Google. They've been leveraging, you know, the Google platform and the network to onboard consumers. Nano Banana was a big moment. Sora and the Meta Vibes, Apple sort of made a splash, but haven't been super sticky but where do you see the gap in breaking through with consumers in a new way or just doing what consumers already expect, but better, cheaper, faster? Like where is the consumer AI opportunity now that we're three years into the ChatGPT boom?

[Victor Shaburov]

I think fundamentally you're able to actually get stuff done right now. So that's a big differentiating factor for the user experience. And we don't really know where this experiment is going to take us. Given how the domain is resonating with people, we can introduce social network elements to it. I think the fact that every single person on earth is going to have an assistant of this sort of unlock new type of interactions and make our lives just better through serendipity advice, staying on top of things and being proactive, really understanding us. So I'm pretty excited about the wandering aspect of it. We try to keep an open mind and not really be set on one thing. We now have 300,000 people waiting for us to give them the product. We're going to very quickly iterate on it. I'm a huge believer in moving quickly and listening to actual customers and we will see where the journey takes us. I take a very long term view. What can we do with this in 10 years? I think it worked in the crypto space and the opportunity here, the size is much, much bigger.

[Chris Dixon]

Yeah. So much of what happened in crypto was sort of permissionless, bankless. This open source, these networks, anyone can set up a nod. And part of this latest openclaw cloudbot hype cycle is driven by the fact you get a Mac Mini, it can talk to iMessage, it can talk to WhatsApp, it can talk to Telegram, it can go sort of wherever you go as a person. And that feels unique because maybe OpenAI can't go over to WhatsApp because Mark Zuckerberg doesn't want to let him. And so I'm wondering about how you're thinking about the trade off between certain things that are only possible with an open source AI system that is sort of acting as an imposter, as a human versus you're a company. If you want to integrate with WhatsApp, you might have to give Meta a call. So how do you think about delivering the vision of like a truly universal AI agent that can do things with the realities of the business community?

[Victor Shaburov]

There are a lot of business and UX challenges here, so we'll have to resolve them one by one.

[Chris Dixon]

Sure.

[Victor Shaburov]

And our view is we want to stand on the side of the consumer and help them make these Technical choices, make sure that their data is safe, make sure that they can do what they want to do without putting themselves at risk and solving these issues with access to data, with user experience, it cannot feel like a choreograph today. You need to be really technical to get value out of it. So there's plenty of work and it's difficult and that's part of the opportunity.

[Tech Podcast Host]

Yeah. One of the some unrequested feedback. For me, I had kind of heard that AI.com was potentially something like some type of leveraging some open claw technology. And then I got hit with the Google login and I was like, I don't have time to read through kind of the full terms of service privacy policy and really understand. So I would love to see, I mean maybe there's plans for it, but I'd love to see just like being able to create account an account on the platform to play around with it. Just because I was looking at my Gmail which my life is on my work email, which obviously, you know, has its own privacy concerns, all that stuff. What you said you're rolling out the product tomorrow. What's the first thing that you want people to do with it?

[Victor Shaburov]

I think this is the big part of the product, figuring out how do you onboard people to it and get them to do a couple of things so that they can see value very quickly and connect with it. I think today it's pretty hard to get the feeling for what it can do without really connecting your email and calendar. We will see. I feel that there is going to be a lot of experimentation there and we will look for user feedback and truth in data, in numbers of what really works and what doesn't. To a certain degree you need to gamify it until such point where users are deep enough that it actually gives them the feeling of like wow, this is special, this is different. Yeah, yeah.

[Chris Dixon]

That gamification is so important. Like you see the Studio Ghibli moment where you know the Latest images in ChatGPT launches and you don't even have to think, you just have something in your camera roll and, and you're gonna type Studio Ghibli and you're gonna get the value prop and then a couple months later you're still gonna be going there for slide inspiration and stock photography and all the other things that you can do. But there's a killer app on day one that you come in and you get joy out of.

[Tech Podcast Host]

Did you ever talk to the Original owner of AI.com I heard he sat on it for 30 years. His initials, his first and last name. His first a last name starts with I. So he had bought the domain.

[Victor Shaburov]

Wow.

[Tech Podcast Host]

I'm shocked that he held onto it for so long. You would think like IBM, wanna IBM in like 2010.

[Chris Dixon]

Oh, totally.

[Tech Podcast Host]

We'll give you a million.

[Victor Shaburov]

Yeah.

[Chris Dixon]

But he held on.

[Victor Shaburov]

Look, we spoke on the day when we closed the transaction because he had a, it was a little bit of a bidding war. He had a very serious bidder on the other side and it required connecting in order to get it done.

[Chris Dixon]

That's good.

[Tech Podcast Host]

Your deals.

[Victor Shaburov]

And by the way, and by the way, right after we closed the deal, I got approached from the other side offering 500 million plus. Not for 500 million for the domain. I think I could have pushed it to a billion if I wanted to, but I didn't want to. So I think you guys need to understand I am pot committed. I love it.

[Chris Dixon]

I love it. You are committed.

[Tech Podcast Host]

I love that you're just thinking, you're viewing this like obviously you're taking it very seriously, but you're also taking the approach of like it's very early days in what will be a long journey for the project, but also the industry and you're just going to listen to your users and figure it out. But the conviction to turn down what would have been turning 70 million into 500 or a billion in 24 hours is admirable.

[Chris Dixon]

Will you train a foundation model?

[Victor Shaburov]

I think I'm more focused on getting this to scale and getting the data flywheel going so that we can deliver for our users. Our users don't really care about which model runs in the background as long as the job gets done and their data is safe. But once you get to a certain scale, who knows?

[Chris Dixon]

Anything's on the table. I like it.

[Tech Podcast Host]

Well, I'm sure you'll be back on.

[Chris Dixon]

That's very exciting.

[Tech Podcast Host]

I'm excited to see this roll out and I'm signing up tomorrow.

[Chris Dixon]

I might be using a dummy Google account, but I will be signing up and testing this out. I'm excited. And then I'll slowly forward myself data from my real account to give you.

[Victor Shaburov]

A little bit more, a little bit.

[Chris Dixon]

More to see what it can do. But I'm excited for the launch tomorrow and congratulations. I mean a fantastic career, but also this particular project. Really, really fun execution and a wonderful story. So thank you for coming.

[Tech Podcast Host]

Do you come, you're basically the mayor of, of Los angeles through the crypto.com arena. Do you, do you come through much?

[Chris Dixon]

You're a Lakers guy.

[Victor Shaburov]

I've been in D.C. last week, and then I stopped over in Silicon Valley. I have never been to the arena.

[Tech Podcast Host]

Never been to the arena. Wow.

[Chris Dixon]

You gotta come sometime. Catch a game.

[Victor Shaburov]

Maybe we should catch a game. Yeah.

[Chris Dixon]

They also do monster truck rallies there. Underrated crypto.com arena experience. Especially if you have kids.

[Tech Podcast Host]

This is a big, big monster truck guy.

[Chris Dixon]

I'm a big monster truck guy. I don't really follow basketball that much, but I will be watching Grave Digger live on the crypto.com arena. Anyway, thank you so much for taking the time.

[Victor Shaburov]

Congrats on the last.

[Chris Dixon]

Have a great rest of your day. We'll talk to you soon.