What’s in a name? For a growing number of companies, it’s a chance to more closely associate their operations with the artificial intelligence boom.

Some firms have gone lengths to add “AI” to their company names, while others have taken the more subtle step of renaming their website domains or products.

Experts say it’s all a move to tap into AI’s trendiness, and it’s similar to what happened during the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s, when companies overwhelmingly added “.com” or other internet terms to their names.

Inserting AI into a company name can help recruit talent and investors, but there are drawbacks to associating with AI. At least one Chicago-based company has reversed course and taken it out of their title.

The companies in question

Formerly Go Abacus Corporation, Go.AI, a Chicago-based company that builds private AI infrastructure for other companies, announced its new name Sept. 1.

“We put AI in the name because it’s no longer just a feature of what we do, it’s the foundation of our company,” said David Moscatelli, the company’s founder and CEO.

The announcement was timed just before Go.AI announced it had raised $85 million in funding from investors.

Tempus Labs, Eric Lefkofsky’s health technology company, rebranded as Tempus AI in December 2023, about a year after OpenAI released its viral ChatGPT model as a chatbot.

“We occasionally get flack from people who don’t understand our business and believe that we are merely capitalizing on a trend. They often point to the fact that of our 3 products — Diagnostics, Data, and Applications — our Applications business is the smallest at single digit percentages of our total revenues; as if to prove that the AI part of our business is small,” Lefkofsky wrote in blog post on the company’s website in 2025.

“What they don’t understand is how deeply embedded AI is across all of our business units, and how each of these components is foundational to being an ‘AI company’ in healthcare.”

HatchWorks, an Atlanta-based AI solutions company that has an office in Chicago, rebranded as HatchWorks AI shortly after the rise of ChatGPT.

“AI has always been part of our suite of services, but after seeing the rise of (large language models) in 2022, we decided to go all in on the focus of our business,” Matt Paige, the vice president of strategy and marketing at HatchWorks AI, wrote in an email to the Tribune. “It naturally made sense for us to update our name accordingly.”

Legal data intelligence company Relativity, which started in Chicago 25 years ago, announced the renaming of its flagship product, RelativityOne, to Relativity aiR in mid September. Company president Chris Brown said the decision was made to more adequately reflect what the product offered.

“The new generative AI capabilities we built effectively became the default workflows in the platform,” Brown said. “The name change follows that.”

Chicago-based warehouse quality control company Arvist Inc. uses AI to prevent the damage of warehouse tools and verify orders, and has the website domain arvist.ai.

We “use arvist.ai as our web address, mainly so people get an immediate sense that we are an AI company,” Nilay Parikh, the CEO and founder of Arvist Inc wrote in an email.

The perks of AI-ifying in your company name

For the companies that have taken the leap, having AI in their names has drawn attention from investors and brought in strong job applicants.

“I think what we are seeing is that many companies are trying to garner more legitimacy and appeal to external audiences,” said Hatim Rahman, an associate professor at Northwestern who specializes in artificial intelligence. “When a new trend starts that attracts more attention and resources, many companies externally seek to align with that through changes in their name, changes in their website, changes that signal that they are part of this new wave.”

“The artificial intelligence field itself is old,” he added. “But yes, the interest of it amongst the public and investors has definitely increased a lot.”

In Go.AI’s name-change announcement, the company explained that for existing clients, the shift is purely administrative.

“I think when you have a simple name that’s catchy, people remember you,” Moscatelli said. “We’ve seen a lot of investors really interested in the name because it sort of sounds like something they should know.”

While the company pitched itself as “Go Abacus Corporation” during its Series A fundraising, Moscatelli said its investors were strongly in favor when informed of the new name.

“I’m biased, but in my opinion, it’s a premium name up there with OpenAI and Anthropic,” Moscatelli said.

For Relativity, renaming its flagship product “simplifies” their story for investors and job applicants, Brown said.

Adding AI to its name has drawn intrigue from potential candidates at Go.AI, Moscatelli said.

“I could just tell when we’re on calls and we say ‘Go.AI,’” Moscatelli said. “It just sounds cooler, you know? It’s to the point, it says exactly what we do.”

The disadvantages

Companies going all-in on AI during a rebrand face the possibility of misrepresenting themselves to candidates and investors. They also risk associating with a technology that, for some people, is being increasingly perceived as controversial.

“The main drawback I think is creating unrealistic expectations,” Rahman said. “Among job seekers, it can make it more difficult if you’re not able to deliver on providing the career growth and opportunities that you know the switch to AI may imply.”

If the opportunity to build custom models and work with teams of like-minded peers was not actually available at a company because the AI name was just a veneer, that’s where the rebranding trend could create problems, Rahman said.

“AI is a very broad term, and it can mean many different things,” said Rahman. “So the devil is really in the details.”

The renaming trend is a tactic companies have used for a long time, Rahman said. It calls back to the “.com” one in the late ’90s, which grimly ended when companies like Pets.com burned through all its cash reserves, despite investment banks maintaining favorable ratings for the company.

UK-based startup Builder AI notoriously flopped after posing as an AI-powered app creation platform whose workload turned out to be heavily shouldered by humans. Power investors like Microsoft failed to detect the company’s farce before its $450 million fall.

“Whenever you have increased attention and investment, you also see a simultaneous rise in scam and fraud risk as well,” Rahman said.

Chicago-based restaurant-solutions company, ClearCOGS.com, uses machine learning to help restaurants project food supply and staffing. The company, which started as ClearCOGS.ai before the release of ChatGPT in 2022, took AI out of its name.

“Pre-ChatGPT, machine learning AI was this ethereal thing,” CEO and co-founder Matt Wampler said. “The idea that this computer algorithm, AI, was going to give them a human answer to what to prep tomorrow, just felt very untrustworthy.”

So, the company decided to delete the two letters that were causing all the trouble, and become ClearCOGS.com, with no mention of AI.

Then ChatGPT went viral.

“All of the sudden, you saw, 2024, 2025, everybody becoming an AI company,” Wampler said. Companies would say they use AI, and it was essentially a “get-out-of-jail-free card,” said Wampler. There was little explanation needed about what the company actually did.

The .ai website domain has grown to be about 5 to 10 times more expensive than the .com one, Wampler said. BBC reported in 2025 that the Caribbean island of Anguilla, which owns the domain, had been making millions by jacking up the price of the address when selling it to tech firms.

Wampler and his team were regretting their decision as they stood back and watched other companies cash in on the AI craze, but recent pushback against the trend has made them happy with their decision.

“Everyone jumped into AI, not knowing what they were doing,” Wampler said. “The conversation in 2026 has been kind of the backlash against that: ‘It’s AI slop.’ ‘AI is coming for our jobs.’”

With the negative connotations surrounding AI right now, Wampler thinks companies are better off keeping the two letters at a healthy distance from their names.

Is it worth it?

“If someone’s thinking about it, ‘should we add AI to our name?’ I’d say go for it. It’s like temporary pain for long-term benefit,” Moscatelli said. “I think it does make a difference in our client relationships.”

Parikh wasn’t so sure.

“From an investment standpoint, I don’t think the name makes a difference,” Parikh wrote to the Tribune. “Investors back the product, the team and the value being created. Clients think the same way. An AI name can earn some extra attention for an article or at a trade show, but the offering decides the outcome.”

Although they renamed their product, Brown said Relativity remains confident in their decision to keep AI out of the company’s official name.

“The company name is more than just software, more than just AI, it’s a reflection of our whole community,” Brown said. “My general notion is to not over tilt on an AI company name, because the capabilities and technology changes over time.”

For a startup, however, Brown thinks it’s a different game.

“If you’re a new startup right now,” Brown said, “I would support you in whatever name you think is gonna cut through most.”

“I think people are still trying to lead with AI. And I think that’s a mistake,” said Wampler. “The market has shifted against them, and I think marketing organizations and sales organizations are slow to adapt.”

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