![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
One unlikely beneficiary has been the British Overseas Territory of Anguilla, which lucked into a future fortune when ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, gave the island the “.ai” top-level domain in the mid-1990s. Indeed, since ChatGPT’s launch at the end of 2022, the gold rush for websites to associate themselves with the burgeoning AI technology has seen a flood of revenue for the island of just ~15,000 people.
In 2023, Anguilla generated 87 million East Caribbean dollars (~$32 million) from domain name sales, some 22% of its total government revenue that year, with 354,000 “.ai” domains registered.
As of January 2, 2026, the number of “.ai” domains surpassed 1 million, per data from Domain Name Stat — suggesting that the nation’s revenue from “.ai” has likely soared, too. This is confirmed in the government’s 2026 budget address, in which Cora Richardson Hodge, the premier of Anguilla, said, “Revenue from domain name registration continues to exceed expectations.”
The report mentions that receipts from the sale of goods and services came in way ahead of expectations, thanks primarily to the revenue from “.ai” domains, which is forecast to hit EC$260.5 million (~$96.4 million) for the latest year. In 2023, domain name registrations were about 73% of that wider category. Assuming a similar share of that category for this year would suggest that the territory has raked in more than ~$70 million from “.ai” domains in the past year.
Anguilla typically charges $140 for a two-year domain registration, creating a steady stream of income, as some 90% of domains renew after two years. But auctions for expired “.ai” domains, sold via domain name registrar Namecheap, are where bigger numbers roll in — for example, the domain “you.ai” was bought for $700,000 last September, and even in the past week, 31 expired “.ai” domains were sold at a total price of ~$1.2 million, per domain sale tracker NameBio.
