Lei Jun invested more than 20 million in Mi.com! The most expensive domain name in the history of the Internet?

The Xiaomi Car launch event was a great success!

The "Auto Spring Festival Gala" at the beginning of 2024 has come to a close, marking the end of a months-long guessing game. Finally, the mystery has been revealed. The Xiaomi Car SU7 has officially hit the market with a starting price of 215,900 yuan. In just 27 minutes, the number of orders surpassed 50,000! The popularity is unprecedented!

Xiaomi's official domain is the two-letter "Mi.com," registered in November 1998. This domain was acquired by Lei Jun in 2014 for $3.6 million (approximately 22.42 million yuan at the exchange rate of that time). "Mi" stands for the initials of "Xiaomi" in Pinyin and also represents "Mobile Internet" in English, perfectly aligning with Xiaomi's brand. The domain for Xiaomi's car division is xiaomiev.com, registered in June 2020.

There's an interesting story behind the acquisition of "mi.com". Before 2014, Xiaomi's official domain was "xiaomi.com". Lei Jun, considering Xiaomi's international expansion, decided to upgrade the official domain from "xiaomi.com" to "mi.com". However, "Mi.com" was already owned by a professor at Stanford University, who was a domain collector and had acquired it in 1991.

Lei Jun, being astute, entrusted a domain agent to negotiate with the professor. They were prepared to settle for a lower price. However, for a domain enthusiast, a domain is priceless and not easily sold. Eventually, Lei Jun acquired it for 22.42 million yuan. Lei Jun later tweeted, "Mi.com is incredibly expensive, probably one of the most expensive domain names in the history of the Chinese internet!"

At that time, the price seemed exorbitant. But for Xiaomi, which now has a cash reserve of 136.7 billion yuan, it's insignificant. It was this expensive domain that brought a significant amount of exposure to Xiaomi at the time.

In recent times, there have been two significant events in the internet industry regarding domain names:

1. 360 Company launched 360AI Search and adopted the new domain sou.com.

2. Honor Company upgraded its official domain hihonor.com to Honor.com.

Why do internet giants spare no expense in investing in domain names? In the words of Zhao Ming, CEO of Honor Company: "Because a domain name is not just a name, but a strategy, and more importantly, it indicates the future value direction of a company, which cannot be measured in terms of money."