Also called .ai · dot ai
.ai domain, explained
The Government of Anguilla controls .ai, and Identity Digital has operated the registry platform since January 2025. Anyone can register, with no local-presence requirement, through ordinary registrars. Registrations and renewals come in two-year minimum terms, so every name costs two years of fees at a time. Disputes go through the UDRP, and WIPO reports that .ai is among the three country-code extensions with the most cases it handles.
Growth has been fast. The namespace passed one million registered names in January 2026, up from 598,007 at the start of 2025, according to Domain Name Wire, and .ai registrations brought Anguilla EC$230 million (US$85.3 million) in 2025, according to Anguilla Focus. Resale prices are high for a country code: the Global Domain Report 2026 put the average .ai resale price at about $11,000, and Escrow.com handled $10.3 million in .ai deals in the fourth quarter of 2025.
For an investor, .ai is a bet that a label stays meaningful. The names that sell are short, generic, AI-relevant words a startup could build a brand on; long phrases and keyword combinations rarely do, and the two-year term doubles the cost of being wrong. Expired .ai names do not simply drop: the registry auctions them first, so the gTLD drop-catching playbook does not carry over. Policy and pricing are set by one government and can change.
Demand for .ai comes from companies that want the letters AI in their address, and the resale market depends on that demand lasting. Treat .ai holdings as concentrated exposure to one sector, keep renewals in proportion to realistic sale odds, and watch the renewal decisions on names registered during the boom, whose two-year terms began coming due in mid-2026.
Example. A founder who registers a one-word .ai for a machine-learning product pays for two years at once because of the registry's minimum term.
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- Identity Digital — .ai completes migration to the Identity Digital platform (Jan 15, 2025)
- Dynadot Help — .ai domains require a minimum registration or renewal term of 2 years (accessed Oct 1, 2026)
- WIPO — domain name cases in 2025 (Jan 14, 2026)
- Domain Name Wire — .ai namespace hits 1 million domain names (Jan 28, 2026)
- Anguilla Focus — .ai domain surge brings EC$230m windfall to Anguilla in 2025 (Mar 25, 2026)
- InterNetX and Sedo — Global Domain Report 2026, data for 2025 (2026)
- Escrow.com — Domain Investment Index Q4 2025 (Mar 4, 2026)
- Domain Name Wire — Namecheap scores deal to sell expiring .ai domain names (Feb 4, 2025)
- Identity Digital — Anguilla and Identity Digital boost .ai revenue with auctions and DropZone features (Mar 27, 2025)
- Domain Name Wire — The coming .ai junk drop (June 29, 2026)
Education, not financial, legal or tax advice. Domain investing is speculative and most domain names never sell. Read the disclaimer.