TL;DR – the .ai country-code domain needed roughly five years to scale from ~40,000 registrations in early 2020 to over 1M in early 2026.
This TLD, managed by Identity Digital, has a huge fiscal impact on the Anguilla (&70M revenue in 2025), as well on aftermarket, with multiple six-figure domain sales.
The milestone reflects continued demand for AI-branded digital identities across startups, enterprises, research initiatives, and tooling providers.
Originally assigned to Anguilla as its country-code TLD, .ai has evolved into a de facto global namespace for artificial intelligence related sites. This additional revenue is reinvested into long-term infrastructure and public services on the island.
Important pattern
The strongest cases where ccTLD revenue impacts national budgets tend to share:
- Very small populations..
- Limited domestic tax base.
- Two-letter codes that align with global industry keywords.
The most relevant examples include:
- .tv (Tuvalu) – around ~784,000 registrations by late 2025,
- .io (British Indian Ocean Territory) that reached 1.6+ million registrations by 2025.
Others like .co, .me, .gg, and .fm are commercially successful but generally less central to the fiscal stability of the countries they represent.
Market context
Crossing one million domains places .ai in the upper tier of country-code TLDs by global adoption. Demand for .ai domains accelerated alongside the commercial expansion of generative AI, foundation models, AI SaaS platforms, and tooling ecosystems.
Also the .ai secondary market has seen multiple high-value transactions, including:
| Domain | Reported Sale Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| wisdom.ai | $750,000 | Highest publicly reported .ai aftermarket sale |
| you.ai | $700,000 | Previously highest reported sale |
| cloud.ai | $600,000 | Reported through marketplace data |
| blockchain.ai | $405,000 | Six-figure sale via registrar channels |
In case of .ai, unlike many niche or trend-driven TLD spikes, growth has translated into measurable fiscal impact.
What this means for hosting and domain players
In the January 2026 article “EuroDNS updated its prices for 29 domains, including .ai and .health, after registry changes” we covered the first 2026 price increase (in our opinion not the last one this year) of the .ai domain:
For hosting providers and registrars this 1M milestone confirms that:
- .ai is not a niche upsell, only a core extension in startup portfolios.
- prices of .ai domains will most likely grow fast due to its perceived premium character.
Damian Andruszkiewicz
Author of this post.