AI ‘Friend’ Company Spent $1.8 Million and Most of Its Funds on Domain Name
AI ‘Friend’ Company Spent $1.8 Million and Most of Its Funds on Domain Name
AI companion Friend appears to have spent most of its funds on buying friend.com.
The article is even more wack than the price for the domain. They want to launch a $99 necklace that listens to everything you say while it “forms its own thoughts” about it. Then instead of talking to you, it just texts you when IT “wants” (read: on a timer or based on a system prompt)
The monetization is a one-time $99, no subscription. That’s … suspicious from a privacy perspective.
Dot-com vibes.
Archive link against the pay/subscription wall
Thank you. I run BPC and forget that not everyone does.
Please note the title is misleading. The domain was sold for 1.8 million, but with a payment plan. So that 1.8 million gets spread out of a longer time. Sure some of the initial funding paid for it, but it's misleading to say it spent most of their funds.
That honestly seems pretty low for friend.com
Although the fact they're developing hardware on less than a million dollar budget is bananas, let alone the other whack ideas
I remember when the place I worked at changed names and some Russian guy was sitting on the domain name, wouldn't let it go for less than a million.
The CEO signed off on it after a day of consideration. Really changed my perspective on how much money these companies were sitting on.
It's a bubble
"People just don’t get consumer, I view this as saving money. Much less money needs to be spent on marketing, it’s a one time thing," Schiffmann said.
The fact that we're now reading this article and talking about it kind of proves his point!
Speak for yourself; I'm not going to read the article and just assume it's silly garbage based on comments and having seen a few garbage products in my day.
Friend.com for those who don't want to read the article
They should have called it Friend Computer instead.
Or just use AI or IO instead of com
Indeed, friend citizen. Would you like some Bouncy Bubble Beverage?
Looks like the article requires an account. Is there an archived version?