Crypto.com founder Kris Marszalek made the most expensive domain purchase in history, buying AI.com for $70 million, according to the Financial Times, just in time for a new Super Bowl ad. The deal, paid entirely in cryptocurrency to an unknown seller, shatters previous records. Marszalek plans to debut the site during the Super Bowl, offering consumers a personal AI agent for messaging, app usage, and stock trading.
The purchase highlights the growing interest and investment in artificial intelligence. Marszalek told the Financial Times that he believes "AI is going to be one of the greatest technological waves of our lifetime" and that he takes a long-term view of 10 to 20 years. The sale was facilitated by broker Larry Fischer.
The Super Bowl also saw other major brands leveraging AI in their advertisements. Svedka Vodka, for example, created what it touts as the first primarily AI-generated national Super Bowl spot, titled "Shake Your Bots Off," featuring the company's robot characters. The 2026 Super Bowl advertisements took it a step further by leveraging AI both to create the commercials and to promote the latest AI products, according to TechCrunch.
In other tech news, Waymo, the Alphabet-owned self-driving company, is expanding its robotaxi services. Waymo now operates commercial robotaxi services in six markets, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Austin, Atlanta, and Miami, according to TechCrunch. The company plans to grow its fleet of driverless taxicabs this year to more than a dozen new cities internationally, including London and Tokyo, and has $16 billion to fuel that expansion.
Meanwhile, a march supporting California's billionaires drew a small crowd in San Francisco. The San Francisco Chronicle counted around three dozen attendees, along with another dozen counter-protesters. The demonstration, organized by Derik Kauffman, was to protest the Billionaire Tax Act, a proposed state ballot measure.
In a separate project, a startup is attempting to recreate lost footage from Orson Welles' classic film "The Magnificent Ambersons" using generative AI. The project, led by Edward Saatchi, comes from a genuine love of Welles and his work, according to an in-depth profile by The New Yorker's Michael Schulman. Saatchi recalled a childhood of watching films in a private screening room with his movie-mad parents.
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