Also called AI domain aftermarket · .ai resale market
.ai aftermarket, explained
Demand is driven by the extension's association with artificial intelligence, and the namespace passed one million registered names in January 2026. Escrow.com handled $10.3 million in .ai transactions in Q4 2025, the first quarter above $10 million, with a mean .ai deal of $155,000. The Global Domain Report 2026 put the average .ai resale price at about $11,000, more than 40% above 2024, and the largest .ai sale reported in 2026 through late August was Bot.ai at $1,200,000. Expiring .ai names may be auctioned through the registry's partnership with Namecheap.
Read those numbers with care: averages are pulled up by a few large deals, and most .ai names, like most names in any extension, never sell. Holding costs are high: the wholesale price is eighty dollars a year with a two-year minimum for registrations and renewals, several times the .com wholesale price. The practical view is to buy short, real words with an obvious AI-product use, check trademarks first, since .ai is among the top three country-code extensions by WIPO dispute volume, and price from actual .ai sales rather than headline deals.
Example. A startup that launched on a two-word .ai name later turns to the .ai aftermarket to buy the one-word .ai it wanted from the start, closing the deal through escrow.
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- Domain Name Wire — .ai namespace hits 1 million domain names (Jan 28, 2026)
- Escrow.com — Domain Investment Index Q4 2025 (Mar 4, 2026)
- InterNetX and Sedo — Global Domain Report 2026, data for 2025
- DNJournal — 2026 year-to-date domain sales chart (Aug 23, 2026)
- Domain Name Wire — The coming .ai junk drop, on .ai wholesale price and two-year minimum (June 29, 2026)
- ICANN — .com Registry Agreement, Section 7.3 pricing (Dec 1, 2024)
- WIPO — Domain name dispute filings in 2025, .ai among top ccTLDs (Jan 14, 2026)
Education, not financial, legal or tax advice. Domain investing is speculative and most domain names never sell. Read the disclaimer.