OpenAI launches dots. The dot.com domain sends you to xAI.
TechCrunch reports that Musk's xAI acquired dot.com before the dots launch. The redirect is real; the theory that it was a deliberate prank remains unconfirmed.
A rival gets the address
OpenAI launched dots on September 29, but visitors to the singular domain dot.com are sent to xAI. TechCrunch reports that Elon Musk’s company had already acquired the address before the launch and that it redirects to the Grok chatbot download page. The discovery prompted speculation online that xAI had deliberately anticipated OpenAI’s product name.
AITrending checked the redirect on September 30 at 07:26 UTC: dot.com returned an HTTP 301 response pointing to https://x.ai/bot. That confirms the destination of the domain at the time of the check. The identification of that destination as the Grok download page is supported by TechCrunch’s reporting.
An acquisition, not a brand-new registration
TechCrunch says the domain transferred in July. The public Verisign record lists its original registration as June 22, 1994, and its last change as July 28, 2026. A registry’s last-change timestamp alone does not establish the date, buyer or purpose of a sale; the attribution to xAI comes from the report.
The address in this story is dot.com, singular. TechCrunch separately describes dots.com, plural, as belonging to a different, long-defunct company. These are different domains.
The prank theory is still a theory
TechCrunch said it had asked xAI about the purchase. Its report did not establish that Musk personally arranged it, that xAI had advance knowledge of OpenAI’s name, or that trolling was the motive. The domain redirect and the resulting rivalry story are reportable without turning that speculation into fact.
This adds another thread to the dots launch, alongside its product rollout and reported live-demo interruption.