Story Content

In the years 1993, when the internet was still being a new development and very few people had the slightest idea of email, one small but very fateful choice was made by a 10 year old boy in Malaysia by the name Arsyan Ismail. Based on the credit card of his mother (with her confused approval), he was able to register the domain name AI.com to only $100- exhibiting a price of about 300. Why? It is not due to the fact that he predicted the AI revolution. Just the fact that AI was the initials of his name: Arsyan Ismail.

It was simply a Web address of a few, catchy web addresses in those early days of the World Wide Web. Domains did not yet represent a big business and AI equated to two letters of his birth certificate. His mother must have enquired about this peculiar taxation, and young Arsyan had kept it close to his heart all the next thirty years.

In the 2020s, the Internet of Things experience the radical impact of artificial intelligence. But all of a sudden, AI.com turned into the final digital real estate, short, memorable, and everything existing in the history of the hottest technology trend. The value of the field has increased tremendously as companies competed to brand themselves in the age of AI.

It was the right time in April 2025 with Arsyan. He sold AI.com to Kris Marszalek, the CEO and co-founder of Crypto.com, to acquire it at an outrageous 70 million (which is about 634 crore at the then exchange rates). This is a decades-old story with a modern twist since the transaction was conducted with all Bitcoin. Reportedly, it is one of the most massive publicly reported domain sales.

The customer did not wait long--AI.com was repurposed as a platform of agentic AI (autonomous AI agents) and the high profile launch of the same product happened at Super Bowl LX in early 2026 and caught the attention of people all over the world.

The story of Arsyan is not about future vision but it is about being patient, seeing into the future and pushing onto something very simple which later turned out to be very very precious. What began as an adult whim was one of the biggest digital windfalls of all time. You can find a similar lesson in the story of the old Brooklyn bookstore-keeper, who made no fuss in his work, but quietly spent years and decades believing in the things that other people had already forgotten instead of seeing them as opportunities. In an era of fast clicks and viral buzz, the tale of the old Brooklyn bookstore-keeper teaches us this: that at times, the greatest action gains can be accomplished by a long-standing commitment, a belief in the things out of which others have already distilled their opportunity.