A small island in the Caribbean is enjoying a windfall thanks to AI – but not through large language models or the latest buzz surrounding Nvidia.
Anguilla, an overseas British Territory with a population of about 16000, is cashing in on something dating from the infancy of the internet – a country's designated domain.
The territory was designated .ai when its country code top-level domain (or ccTLD) was registered in 1996. This was about 11 years after .us was registered for website addresses in the United States and .uk for the United Kingdom.
According to Domain Name Stat, a website tracker, there are almost 878,000 .ai pages in use – or 54 for every island resident. The number has doubled in the past year.
How valuable is the .ai domain?
Your average Anguillan is not buying .ai. Instead, technology firms are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for the addresses to highlight their AI products.
US tech boss Dharmesh Shah spent a reported $700,000 (Dh2.56 million) on you.ai.
Mr Shah told the BBC he bought the address for an idea around an AI product that allows people to create “digital versions of themselves” that will carry out specific tasks on their behalf.
The page currently redirects to a YouTube video of a TED Talk starring Mr Shah.
The Anguillan government reported revenue of $39 million in 2024 from selling domain names, up from an estimated $32 million the previous year. This accounts for more than 20 per cent of the government's total revenue, behind only tourism (37 per cent).
The IMF noted that Anguilla has been savvy with its pricing model, charging $140 for a two-year registration period. “This model not only encourages new registrations but also guarantees a steady stream of income from renewals, given that about 90 per cent of domains are renewed after two years,” it said.
Is Anguilla the first?
Anguilla's revenue boost is similar to the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, which capitalised on the .tv domain from the late 1990s with the glut of television channels entering the webspace.
The country still enjoys a significant revenue boost thanks to streaming platforms such as Twitch. Tuvalu estimated it collected $10.8 million from the domain, according to its 2024-2025 budget.
