.ai domain news & sales blog
The most important articles about .ai domains: record sales, prices, auctions, registry changes and Anguilla's .ai boom. Each post is a short summary with the original article's date and a link to read it in full.
2026
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Elliot Silver: the .ai vs .si debate is a distraction for AI startups
Domain investor Elliot Silver argues that the buzz around .si names, sparked by the US government switching its terminology from "AI" to "Super Intelligence", pulls founders away from what…
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Slovenia's .si logs 20,276 new domains in one day as "Super Intelligence" rename tests .ai
Register.si counted 20,276 new .si registrations in a single 24-hour period, bringing the zone to 298,682 names, after President Trump told the UN on September 22 that AI should be called…
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Semify.ai stays with its investor owner after a close WIPO decision
SEO company Semify, which uses semify.com, filed a cybersquatting complaint against semify.ai, a name owned by well-known .ai investor James Booth. A three-member WIPO panel refused to…
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Eight of the top 10 sales are .ai, all six figures
Eight of the ten top sales on this chart were .ai, and all ten were six figures. OF.ai tied for first at $250,000 through GoDaddy's brokerage.
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Two founders explain why they moved their companies to .ai
This podcast episode talks to two business owners who rebranded onto .ai domains. Felix Ingla of Pedra started on a .so domain that caused problems, and passed on a "get" .com because the…
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Hyperfly loses its bid for hyperfly.ai
Combat sports brand Hyperfly filed a WIPO complaint over hyperfly.ai, owned by investor James Booth. The three-member panel found no proof of bad-faith registration and use.
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Perform.ai sold for $200,000 after changing hands for $3,587 in 2021
Namecheap founder Richard Kirkendall shared a list of 30 .ai sales completed on Spaceship's Sellerhub. The top deal was perform.ai at $200,000, a name that sold for just $3,587 in 2021.
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.ai earns EC$196.8 million in the first half of 2026
.ai generated EC$196.8 million for Anguilla in the first six months of 2026, close to the full-year 2025 total.
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What hosting data says about the .ai namespace
Nadya Frost of the analytics company ShareShift joins the podcast to discuss data on how .ai domains are actually used, and how AI is changing the tools people use to build websites.
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Why many weaker .ai names may drop at renewal time
Dynadot launched pre-expiration auctions, starting with .ai, so owners can sell names they do not want to renew. The background is cost: .ai has an $80 yearly wholesale price and a two-year…
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How .ai money makes Anguilla more resilient
.ai opened for worldwide sale in 2009 and passed one million names by January 2026. The money funds debt repayment, a sovereign wealth fund and a $175 million airport upgrade.
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Questions over the kong.ai cybersquatting decision
Kong Inc., which uses KongHQ.com, won a UDRP case against kong.ai after the owner did not respond. The panelist found cybersquatting.
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SpaceX paid $174,257 for Terafab.ai, and 32 more companies bought .ai names
With more than one million .ai domains registered, Spaceship alone logged over $3 million in reported .ai aftermarket sales in the first months of 2026. Of 49 names sold there through…
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Two letters funding an island: .ai revenue from $2.9M to $93M
.ai revenue grew from about $2.9 million in 2018 to $39 million in 2024 and $93 million in 2025.
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.ai earned Anguilla EC$230 million in 2025
Anguilla earned about EC$230 million (US$85.3 million) from .ai in 2025, more than double 2024 and far above the forecast of EC$132 million.
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Bot.ai tops the chart at $1.2 million
Bot.ai's $1.2 million sale at Sedo topped this chart, the largest public .ai sale on record.
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Record month: .ai brings in EC$32.8 million in February 2026
.ai revenue hit a record EC$32.8 million in February 2026, nearly double the same month a year earlier.
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Which domains still make sense to buy when AI answers the questions
A domain investor explains how AI search has changed what he buys. He now avoids names for how-to sites, recipes, travel blogs, health information and review sites, because AI answers are…
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February 2026: Bot.ai and AI.com redefine domain prices
Bot.ai became the first public seven-figure .ai sale at $1.2 million, 60% above the previous record. AI.com's $70 million price was confirmed the same month.
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Lotus.ai sells for $400,000 as .com and .ai take 19 of 20 spots
Next to the $70 million AI.com sale, Lotus.ai sold for $400,000 through Brandforce. Surface.ai, Climb.ai and Enclave.ai each brought around $100,000.
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What the $70M AI.com deal means for premium domains
An analysis of the AI.com sale: reportedly paid in crypto, dated April 10, 2025 on NameBio, and timed for a Super Bowl launch.
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Bot.ai leads a week of AI-driven domain sales
Bot.ai topped Sedo's public sales at $1.2 million. Many other buyers that week offered AI-based services, mostly on .com names.
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Bot.ai sells for $1.2 million at its buy-now price
Bot.ai sold on Sedo for $1.2 million at its fixed buy-now price, with no negotiation. The previous record was Wisdom.ai at $750,000.
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First seven-figure .ai sale: Bot.ai at $1.2 million
DN Journal called Bot.ai the first public seven-figure .ai sale, beating Wisdom.ai by about 60%.
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AI.com: what Reddit made of the $70 million name
After the AI.com Super Bowl ad, Reddit users reported the site was slow or down and asked for card details to reserve a handle.
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EVO.ai leads .ai on the sales chart at $100,000
EVO.ai sold for $100,000 through Spaceship, the top .ai sale in this DN Journal chart. Rumble.ai followed at $50,000.
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The story behind AI.com: initials worth $70 million
Arsyan Ismail originally bought AI.com because it matched his initials. He reportedly paid about $10 million and sold it for about $70 million.
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AI.com sold for $70 million, paid in crypto
Malaysian entrepreneur Arsyan Ismail sold AI.com to Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek for about $70 million, paid in cryptocurrency, through broker Larry Fischer. The deal was made in April…
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Blockchain.ai lawsuit dropped after $405,000 expired-name auction
Blockchain.ai expired, went through the normal registry process and was sold at a Namecheap auction for $405,000. Its former owner, Howard Gould, sued Identity Digital, CentralNic,…
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AI companies were half the identified buyers on Sedo's weekly list
Six of the 13 identifiable end-user buyers in one week of Sedo sales were AI companies. The top sale was Manager.ai at $30,000, bought by a company that acquires small SaaS businesses and…
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Speed.ai and Amber.ai start 2026 with six-figure sales
Speed.ai sold for $165,000, the top .ai sale and third overall. Spaceship placed 11 .ai names on the chart, led by Amber.ai at $115,000.
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.ai wholesale price rises to $160 for two years
From March 5, 2026, the .ai registry raised its wholesale price by $10 a year. A standard two-year registration or renewal now costs registrars $160, up from $140, before their own markup.
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.ai domain statistics: growth, records and trust
.ai registrations grew about 146% from July 2022 to December 2023, reaching 353,928.
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.ai passes one million registered domains
Anguilla's government announced that .ai had passed one million registrations. A year earlier the official count was 598,007, so the namespace grew by roughly two-thirds in twelve months.
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.ai keeps growing by about 1% a week
.ai passed one million domains and was still growing by about one percent per week.
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One million .ai sites and an estimated $70 million for Anguilla
Domain Name Stat counted over one million .ai domains on January 2, 2026. Sherwood estimates they earned Anguilla about $70 million in a year.
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.ai in 2025: $22 million across 7,335 sales
.ai recorded about $22 million in sales across 7,335 deals in 2025, including 27 six-figure sales.
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2025 in review: how AI changed the domain business
A year-end review of AI and domains. .ai now provides around a quarter of Anguilla's government revenue, and the move to Identity Digital gave the extension a stronger platform and more…
2025
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OpenAI registers hundreds of domains for ChatGPT Atlas
When OpenAI launched its ChatGPT Atlas browser, it registered or blocked hundreds of "chatgptatlas" names across nearly every top-level domain, from .fun to .realty.
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Wisdom.ai sets a record at $750,000 after two years of talks
Wisdom.ai sold for $750,000, beating You.ai's record. The buyer used Grit Brokerage, and the deal took about two years.
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Adapt.ai: bought for $6,510, sold for $300,000
Adapt.ai topped the chart at $300,000. The seller had bought it for $6,510 in 2022.
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How much do "AI" .com names sell for?
The author reviewed the top 50 sales of .com names ending in "ai" over two years. The highest was agenticai.com at $120,000; theai.com sold for $65,000, and HumanityAI.com reportedly went…
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Anguilla, the island making millions from .ai
Anguilla, with about 16,000 residents, received .ai in 1996. By 2025 there were nearly 878,000 .ai sites, about double a year earlier.
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From 50,000 to 850,000 .ai domains
.ai domains grew from under 50,000 in 2020 to more than 850,000, earning Anguilla about $39 million in 2024.
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Tech firms pay millions for .ai names
Anguilla earned about $39 million from .ai in 2024, roughly 23% of its budget according to the IMF.
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Why Anguilla moved .ai to global servers
A draft 2025 budget showed EC$105.5 million (about $39 million) from domain sales in 2024, nearly a quarter of revenue.
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"AI" stays the best-selling keyword
In June 2025, domains containing "ai" again outsold all other keywords on Afternic, holding first place for a second month.
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AI companies are buying domains, often without "AI" in the name
Many of the week's Sedo buyers were AI companies, and most chose names without "AI" in them.
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Law.ai sells for $350,000
Sedo's Mark Ghoriafi closed Law.ai at $350,000, the third-highest .ai sale at the time.
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Will companies build extra sites to be seen by AI models?
An SEO strategist suggests using aged domains with good reputations to build satellite sites aimed at large language models, keeping experiments away from a company's main site.
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Verisign's view: AI is a risk, but not only a risk, for domains
Verisign lists AI as a risk factor in its SEC filings, but CEO James Bidzos told investors he does not see it as purely negative. AI models depend on website content, and the internet will…
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Cloud.ai sold through GoDaddy's brokerage
Cloud.ai sold for up to $600,000 through GoDaddy's Domain Broker Service, the largest country-code sale of the year at that point.
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Cloud.ai sells for $600,000
Investor James Booth sold Cloud.ai for $600,000 through GoDaddy's Domain Broker Service. The buyer paid the brokerage fee.
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Mini.ai sells for €100,000 to an AI directory
Sedo's best sale of the week was mini.ai at €100,000. The buyer runs There's An AI For That, a directory of AI products.
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AI search is changing how people use websites
The author describes how he now starts most searches in ChatGPT and uses Google only for quick lookups. Even simple tools, like an image compressor he used to visit, have been replaced by…
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Zip.ai sells for $200,000
Zip.ai sold for $200,000 through Afternic, topping the chart. A second, private .ai name sold for $165,000 through Namecheap.
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28% of new startups choose .ai
Identity Digital data says .ai use rose about 300% from 2020 to 2025. In Q1 2025, about 28% of startups chose .ai, while .com's share fell from 64% to 46%.
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Anguilla keeps 90% of .ai revenue, says former registry manager
Vincent Cate, who ran the .ai registry for years, said Identity Digital keeps 10% of .ai revenue and Anguilla gets 90%. Under his own management the government received 75%.
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.ai climbs to third place in Afternic sales value
Afternic's 2024 data shows .ai rising from outside the top 20 two years earlier to third place by total sales value in 2024. It was tenth in 2023, and .com still led by a wide margin.
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Namecheap takes over auctions of expiring .ai names
Namecheap won the right to auction expiring .ai domains, taking over from Dynadot, which had run monthly auctions for the registry.
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What Identity Digital's takeover means for .ai owners
Identity Digital completed the migration of .ai to its registry platform on January 15, 2025. Transfers between registrars now add two years to the registration, and WHOIS shows creation…
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"AI" is back as the top keyword in domain sales
AI was the most common keyword in domains sold on Afternic in November 2024, back at number one after a month in second place. It has stayed near the top for more than a year.
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.ai reaches 598,007 domains before the registry handover
The .ai registry counted 598,007 domains at the start of 2025, up more than 25,000 in about a month.
2024
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.ai grows by 40,000 names in two months
The .ai registry reported 572,575 domains on November 27, 2024, about 40,000 more than on October 1.
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How AI lifted Anguilla's economy
Anguilla's domain income quadrupled to $32 million, about 20% of government income, up from roughly 5% before the AI boom.
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Anguilla signs Identity Digital to run .ai
After a tender, Anguilla signed a five-year revenue-share contract with Identity Digital to run the .ai registry, replacing the CoCCA platform. Anguilla keeps most of the revenue and gets a…
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AP: Anguilla turns the AI boom into a digital gold mine
.ai income roughly quadrupled to $32 million. Google and xAI are among the companies using .ai.
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.ai passes 500,000 domains
The registry reported 533,068 .ai domains on October 1, 2024, up from 478,696 three months earlier and more than double the count in June 2023.
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Meta registers .ai names for future Llama models
Meta registered at least 42 domains for its Llama AI models in a single week, mostly .com names combining "llama", a version number and words like code, chat or vision.
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Dictionary-word owner keeps abnormal.ai
Abnormal Security lost its complaint over abnormal.ai. The owner, an investor, had bought it at an expired-name auction in 2022 for $1,035.
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Escrow.com handles $1.8 million of .ai sales in Q2 2024
Escrow.com processed about $90 million in domain sales in the second quarter of 2024. Around $1.8 million of that was .ai, down from $2.6 million in the first quarter.
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.ai nears half a million names, with six-figure sales
The registry counted 478,696 .ai domains on July 1, 2024, about 50,000 more than in April.
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IMF: .ai brought Anguilla $32 million in 2023
The IMF reports that .ai registrations rose from about 144,000 in 2022 to about 354,000 in 2023, bringing in about $32 million, over a fifth of government revenue.
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.ai adds 70,000 names in under four months
The .ai registry reported 425,060 domains on April 12, 2024, about 70,000 more than in December 2023.
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Sedo: .ai enters the top 10 extensions by sales
Sedo's 2023 report shows .ai and .ch pushing .xyz and .io out of the top 10 extensions by sales volume. NPC.ai sold for $250,000 through a partner registrar.
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Record .ai sales at Escrow.com while the wider market dipped
Escrow.com handled about $79 million in domain sales in Q4 2023, its third quarterly decline in a row.
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Vision.ai sells for $100,000 in the expired .ai auction
Dynadot's monthly auction of expired .ai names ended on New Year's Day and grossed over $300,000. Vision.ai was the only six-figure sale at $100,000.
2023
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2023: the year AI took over the domain business
ChatGPT set off a wave of AI tools, including AI domain name generators, and demand for AI names. The December 2023 auction of expired .ai names grossed over $400,000.
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Holiday .ai auction: Vision.ai draws 84 bids
The monthly expired .ai auction ran over the holidays and closed on January 1. Vision.ai already had 84 bids and stood at $38,000 a few days before the end.
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The .ai rules: 14 things you cannot do with a .ai domain
As a country-code domain, .ai sets its own usage rules. The list of prohibited content and activities grew from seven items to 14.
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"AI" briefly drops to ninth among Afternic keywords
In October 2023, "ai" fell from first to ninth place in Afternic's keyword ranking, with "my" and "group" on top.
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Engage.ai leads a $425,000 expired .ai auction
About 224 expired .ai domains sold in Dynadot's December 2023 auction, for over $425,000 in total. Engage.ai topped the list at $86,889.
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"AI" returns to the top of Afternic's keyword list
In September 2023, "ai" was again the most common word in domains sold on Afternic, its first time at number one since May.
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Precise.ai: bought for under $10,000, sold for $110,000
An investor reported selling Precise.ai for $110,000, a few months after buying it for under $10,000.
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An unnamed .ai domain went from $300,000 to $1.5 million
Escrow.com CEO Matt Barrie said a speculator bought an AI-related .ai name for $300,000 and resold it months later for $1.5 million. The name was not disclosed.
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Why scammers pay extra for .ai, and how the registry responds
Netcraft found the number of .ai domains on web servers grew from 913 in 2013 to 115,245, with a smaller rise in blocked .ai sites.
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$160,000 of expired .ai names sold in one day
Of 1,714 expired .ai names offered in Dynadot's November 2023 auction, 192 got bids, totalling about $160,000.
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How .ai domain values exploded in 2023
After you.ai's $700,000 sale, NameBio counted 2,160 .ai sales worth $4.5 million in 2023, against $878,700 in 2022.
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You.ai: the $700,000 sale that changed .ai
You.ai topped the chart at $700,000, almost three times the previous .ai record. The seller was a Chinese investor who had bought .ai names for about ten years.
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You.ai sells for $700,000, a new .ai record
You.ai sold for $700,000 on Sedo, almost three times the previous record of $258,888 for Stack.ai.
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Dynadot buys Park.io and adds .ai auctions to its exchange
Dynadot acquired Park.io, known for running expired-name auctions for country codes like .io and with an existing .ai arrangement.
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.ai registry starts fining registrars $280 over abuse
If a registrar does not resolve a fraud complaint within a week, the .ai registry suspends the domain and charges the registrar $280, plus another $280 if the customer keeps contacting the…
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Dynadot becomes the exclusive auction house for expired .ai
Dynadot launched official auctions of expired .ai domains in September 2023 after a trial in August.
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NPC.ai sets a record at $250,000
NPC.ai sold through Sedo for $250,000, then the largest public .ai sale, ahead of Service.ai at $127,500.
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"AI" becomes the top keyword in domain sales
Afternic's May 2023 list put "ai" first among keywords in sold domains. Five of the 29 names the author had sold that year contained AI.
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Podcast: how AI tools will affect the domain business
DomainAgents CEO Ryan McKegney discusses AI-powered name generators, including his own, and the aftermarket trends he sees.
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First record quarter for .ai at Escrow.com
Escrow.com handled about $129.8 million in domain deals in Q1 2023, helped by a chat.com sale of $10 million or more.
2020
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Expert.ai sets a .ai record at €95,000 in 2020
Sedo brokered the sale of Expert.ai for €95,000 (about $108,000) to Italian AI company Expert System, then a record for a public .ai sale.
2018
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2018: the .ai registry starts auctioning expired names
In 2018 the .ai registry began selling expired domains in its own monthly ten-day auctions, with bids from $100 and an extra hour for late bids.
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2018: .ai moves to a modern registry platform
.ai moved to the CoCCA platform, so registrars could automate registrations instead of relying on manual updates by one administrator on Anguilla.
2017
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How .ai became an "accidental" success
Like .io and .ly, .ai became popular because startups adopted it, not because of marketing. In 2017 the author already saw .ai following that path.
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A look back at .ai in 2017
In 2017, .ai was registered by hand by one administrator in Anguilla and cost at least $100 for a two-year minimum.
.ai domain questions, answered
Where can I buy a premium .ai domain?
On 4ai.ai, a marketplace that owns and sells 254 premium .ai domain names: short, numeric, quantum, crypto, AI & tech and brandable names. You make an offer, get a reply within 24 hours, pay through Escrow.com and pay no buyer fees. Other places to find .ai names are aftermarket platforms such as Sedo, Afternic and Spaceship, and auctions of expired .ai domains.
What is the most expensive .ai domain ever sold?
The largest publicly reported .ai sale is Bot.ai at $1.2 million (Sedo, February 2026). Earlier records were Wisdom.ai at $750,000 (2025) and You.ai at $700,000 (2023). AI.com sold for about $70 million, but that is a .com name.
How much does a .ai domain cost?
A new .ai registration costs registrars $160 wholesale for the required two years (since March 2026), plus their markup. Premium names on the aftermarket range from a few thousand dollars to six or seven figures, depending on length, words and demand. See our .ai domain value guide.
How many .ai domains are registered?
More than one million since January 2026, up from about 48,000 in 2018.
Who runs the .ai domain?
.ai is the country code of Anguilla. Since January 2025 the registry has been managed by Identity Digital, and most of the revenue goes to Anguilla's government. Anyone in any country can register a .ai domain.
Looking for a premium .ai domain?
Browse 254 .ai domain names owned by 4ai and make an offer on any of them.
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