Artificial intelligence is a technology that is entering every possible sector. It is transformative. Every powerful company in the world is investing in it. And that investment is coming to a beautiful island paradise in the English Caribbean.
It’s no secret that many people and companies are getting rich from the rise of artificial intelligence. But among companies like Nvidia and OpenAI is an unexpected beneficiary: Anguilla, a small British overseas territory.
And all thanks to the national domain that I’m sure you’re familiar with: .ai. The island has been in charge of it since the 1990s. Who would have thought that they would end up being rich thanks to an internet domain.
Anguilla, the lucky island
Anguilla, an island in the Caribbean populated by some 16,000 people, is responsible for the country code “.ai” and has been assigning web addresses with this domain since 1995.
Given the boom in AI this year, technology companies in the industry have shown tremendous interest in the .ai top-level domain.
Bloomberg reports that some of the artificial intelligence startups that have recently snapped up the .ai domain include Stability.ai, Elon Musk’s X.ai and Character.ai.
The total number of registrations ending in .ai has doubled in the last year to 287,432, according to Vince Cate, who manages the .ai domain for Anguilla. Cate estimates that domain registration fees will bring the island $30 million in revenue this year.
The rush for .ai domains began on November 30, the day ChatGPT was launched publicly. Demand peaked between December and March, but has since stabilized.
Like other domains, the price of a domain .ai can vary, but registrars like GoDaddy or NameCheap must pay Anguilla a flat price of $140 per domain registration .oh two years. This figure is up from $120 in mid-April, and the price is expected to rise again.
There is a lot of money in the AI business, for example, Microsoft invested over $13 billion in OpenAI. So $30 million is not a huge number, but big enough for you to make a news story out of it.
AI unwittingly accounts for 10% of the island’s GDP
But Anguilla’s economy relies primarily on tourism, a sector that has really felt the impact of the pandemic. According to Insider, the country had an annual GDP of $288 million in 2021, so .ai could account for around 10% of its total domestic product.
Other small nations have benefited from their country codes. Tuvalu, a Pacific island nation with a population of 11,000, has the .tv domain, used by several websites, including Twitch.
The country earned $7.1 million from domain rentals in 2019, about 8% of total government revenues.
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