Every end user for your .ai domain name may not be looking to pay you that lotto winning price. TechCrunch published a piece today on how investors in AI are getting a tad weary. For those setting 6 and 7 figure price tags for their .ai domain names, this is worth reading.
From the article:
A new report from Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), which studies AI trends, found that global investment in AI fell for the second year in a row in 2023.
Both private investment — that is, investments in startups from VCs — and corporate investment — mergers and acquisitions — in the AI industry were on the downswing in 2023 versus the year prior, according to the report, which cites data from market intelligence firm Quid.
AI-related mergers and acquisitions fell from $117.16 million in 2022 to $80.61 million in 2023, down 31.2%; private investment dipped from $103.4 million to $95.99 million. Factoring in minority stake deals and public offerings, total investment in AI dropped to $189.2 billion last year, a 20% decline compared to 2022.
The article goes on to say:
Aaron Fleishman, a partner at Tola Capital, says that investors might be coming to the realization that they’ve been too reliant on “projected exponential growth” to justify AI startups’ sky-high valuations. To give one example, AI company Stability AI, which was valued at over $1 billion in late 2022, reportedly brought in just $11 million in revenue in 2023 while spending $153 million on operating expenses.
Now to be fair deals are getting done but being spread out more. So there might not be that appetite to pay you $9M for your LL.ai. I still like the niche but it’s important to know what’s going on with the people you hope ultimately buy your domain names.
dot mobi 2.0 on route.
I think it will be better than that Josh, I just think that there are people now looking to buy .ai domain names for $5,000 to $20,000 at an investor level and they are getting quoted $1M to $10M.
I mean money is still coming in to the space but it won’t be this free for all where startups are going to pay mid 6 or 7 figures except for an outlier for the very best names.
Raymond, you’re spot on
The big companies, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta are all in on AI
Google held its CLOUD conference last week but it was all about AI
Most Ai startups are looking to be acquired, with a number of exceptions, mainly startups that have reached “unicorn status”
Ai startups have a better chance of getting funded with a .com or an .ai or a ___ai.com
If they’re looking to achieve product market fit, grow user base, build solid AI stack, and bring in revenues, they may do their best to get the .com
If they are creating solid technology, have IP, and solid AI research team aboard, they will get acquired and integrated into the acquiring companies and their names/domains will go off the web
At least 30 AI companies were acquired by giant companies when I was in Montreal ….most of these were startups with minimal revnues, albeit with substantial research and some IP — they were acquired between 50-100 million usd with earnouts and integrated into microsoft or google, etc and the companies themselves no longer even had web sites
AI is really just beyond the stochastic parrot stage with what is avail to the public
But I dare say what’s to come will be pretty close to AGI, at least what I’ve been testing ..still glitches
Anthropic is the company making the most progress IMO
100% wrong
How was he wrong?
Those companies were all in on .Mobi as well.
Not surprised at all. Ai has its place but it’s not going to take over the World.
Except this data doesn’t make sense. Something is missing. Chatgpt came out at the end of nov22, and real hype didn’t start till 2023.
And as domain investor with .ai domains, I can tell you that had 500% STR increase in 2023. If they said 2024 is slower than 2023 , that’s possible. But 2022 for sure didn’t have the hype of 2023 Ai.