Friend.com domain acquired for $1.88 million for AI project

Friend, a maker of artificial intelligence products, recently announced that it had successfully acquired the domain name Friend.com for $1.88 million (roughly Rs. 13.6 million).However, the deal wasn't what many outsiders thought it would be, and Friend didn't put a large amount of its capital directly into the purchase of the domain name.

According to a report from GeekWire, instead of paying most of the cash for the domain name, Friend Inc. used an installment payment method for the acquisition. Company founder Avi Schiffmann revealed that the total acquisition amount for the domain was $1.88 million, with the actual payment coming through an installment plan. This means that instead of paying the entire amount immediately, Friend is spreading the cost through a long-term payment plan.

The exact details of the deal have not been fully disclosed, but according to screenshots of the purchase transaction on Escrow, the domain has been enrolled in a payment plan. While the payment schedule and duration of the deal have not been disclosed, typically, these types of deals can have installment cycles of up to five years, with payments of about $30,000 per month. If a one-time payment or increased payment amount is chosen, the actual payment may be less than $1.88 million.

In an interview, Schiffmann said that the purchase of the Friend.com domain name is critical to the company's strategic growth. He mentioned, “The domain has been sitting idle for 17 years and no one has done anything with it. For an AI product like ours, which is concerned about privacy, it's important to have a domain name like this.”

Friend's move has sparked a lot of discussion; Friend.com was registered in January 1995 and has been around for 29 years. Some have expressed dismay at the use of $1.8 million of the $2.5 million for domain names, arguing that this allocation of funds is too aggressive; while others believe that the value of .com domain names cannot be ignored, and that they are an important asset for the company's future growth.

Notably, the timing of the deal's completion and the status of the payment remain in question. While the domain has been transferred from Tucows to GoDaddy and records show that Friend.com has full administrative rights in the GoDaddy account, Avi Schiffmann confirms that the acquisition is still on a payment plan.