Post by Ben Sherry

Did you see the AI.com ad at the Super Bowl last night? Do you still not understand what AI.com actually does? I'm here to help, but the answer might disappoint you. The mysterious 30-second spot became the top-performing ad of the night with 9.1× more engagement than the average Super Bowl commercial. Then the website immediately crashed when people rushed to sign up. So what is AI.com actually selling? The founder is Kris Marszalek (the Crypto.com guy). He reportedly paid $70 million for the domain last year. In a post on X, Marszalek revealed that AI.com is a "consumer-friendly" wrapper for OpenClaw, the open-source agent framework that went viral two weeks ago. OpenClaw is AI agent that has full access to your computer's local files and can operate on your behalf, like organizing work, sending messages, and executing actions across apps. The tech is powerful but highly technical and risky to set up locally. And since its open-source, anyone can use it to build a product for free. This would be fine if there was actually a product to use, but so far, there isn't anything. Users are currently linking their Google account and credit card to join a waitlist for an AI agent that sure seems to not ready yet. So what's really going on here? My personal theories: → The data play: This is a giant, super-expensive ploy to quickly build a massive database of personal and financial information. → The "Wait, did I buy that last night?": Marszalek dropped $70 million on AI.com, but forgot to actually come up with a product. Eventually sunk-cost fallacy set in. Like a bad night in Vegas on steroids. Theories abound, but we can all agree on one thing: Marszalek should've given at least one of those million dollars to me! Way better use of the money. For his part, OpenClaw creator 🦄 Peter Steinberger says he hadn't even heard about AI.com until the ad aired. His response: "Guess I'm flattered?" Full breakdown in my latest for Inc. Magazine 👇 And sound off with your theories!