Sites with the .ia extension are a hit thanks to AI and help the island of Anguilla

Sites with the .ai extension, which are increasingly popular with the artificial intelligence sector, bring big money to… the island of Anguilla, for which it is the official domain name on the Internet.

Success for .ia sites

Indeed, the two letters .ai do not refer to the initials AI (artificial intelligence in English), but to this British territory in the Caribbean, which like any country or territory has a national extension that it manages as it sees fit. But the booming artificial intelligence sector has taken over this name, which evokes its sector, and more and more companies are buying .ai sites. Currently, their number has reached 175,659, after doubling in 3 years.

For Anguilla, which charges $60 a year and has raised its prices, monthly revenue has doubled in the past six months, said Vince Cate, technical manager of the island’s domain name. Anguilla does not ask buyers for any proof of connection with its territory.

The .ai represents the third source of revenue for the government of the island. “At the current rate of growth, I think it will represent its second source at the end of 2023 and eventually its first”, estimated Vince Cate, without specifying the amount. Mathematically, at 60 dollars per year, this means an income of the order of 10 million dollars per year.

“There are two kinds of extensions, those in two letters which correspond to a country or a territory and the generic names which represent a sector”explains Pierre Bonis, Managing Director of Afnic, which manages the .fr extension. “It is a diversion of the use of a national domain name”, he pointed out, citing other similar cases in recent years. Thus the .tv used by world television channels is actually the domain name of the Tuvalu Islands, a Polynesian archipelago. The .io was adopted by developers who see it as the initials input/output, a common abbreviation in computing, when it comes to the Indian Ocean domain, belonging to a British island in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

“It’s a practice that exists for small countries. But the price of .ai is high – in comparison, Afnic charges .fr 4.56 euros – and is not intended to become massive”according to Pierre Bonis.