Tesla now owns tesla.com. Prior to it, the car company owned teslamotors.com. How exactly Tesla was able to pry it off its previous owner, nobody knows how. Previously, tesla.com was owned by Stu Grossman, a big fan of Nikolai Tesla. Maybe, he just forgot to pay his domain registrar. Or he got paid handsomely for it.
Absolutely he got paid with tesla for the doman