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How a 16,000-Person Island Country Is Accidentally Winning the AI Economy

Nitin ChhabriaBy 3 views
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In the 1990s, when the internet was being carved up into country codes, a tiny
Caribbean island country called Anguilla was assigned two letters: .ai

Nobody thought much of it.Population: 16,000    Economy: tourism & beaches.

The domain TLD sat quietly for decades – occasionally used for local government sites, occasionally picked up by small businesses.NOTHING REMARKABLE.

Then ChatGPT launched in November 2022. And everything changed.

The Numbers That Shouldn’t Be Real

In 2024, Anguilla generated $39 million from selling .ai domains, almost a quarter of the island’s total government revenue. For context, that’s a territory roughly 16 miles long generating meaningful budget lines from domain name registrations.
But 2025 made 2024 look modest. Anguilla earned EC$230 million — approximately US$85 million — from .ai domain registrations in 2025 alone, far exceeding the government’s own projections. Anguilla Focus
As of January 2, 2026, the number of .ai domains surpassed 1 million Sherwood News — a number that almost doubled in a year.

Companies like Perplexity, Claude, X.ai, Meta, and Google deliberately use this extension to emphasise their connection to artificial intelligence.

Every AI startup that registers a .ai domain sends a small cheque to a Caribbean island. Every renewal sends another.

The Aftermarket Is Where It Gets Wild.

The standard registration fee is around $140 for two years — steady, predictable revenue. But the aftermarket for premium .ai domains is where the real numbers appear.

In February 2026, bot.ai sold for $1,200,000 – the highest publicly known .ai domain sale. Previously, wisdom.ai sold for $750,000, you.ai for $700,000, cloud.ai for $600,000, and blockchain.ai for $405,000.

Dharmesh Shah, the co-founder and CTO of HubSpot, paid $700,000 for you.ai for a new venture.
One domain.
One transaction.
More than many startups raise in their seed round.

What Anguilla Is Doing With the Money

This isn’t sitting in a government account. Generated revenue has supported the expansion of the Clayton J Lloyd International Airport, road development, tax relief, and increased health services for the young and elderly.
Since 2018, the number of .ai registrations has increased twentyfold. According to an analysis by Identity Digital, 28% of all newly founded tech startups now use a .ai domain.
An island of 16,000 people is funding its infrastructure on the back of Silicon Valley’s branding decisions.
Every time a founder decides their startup sounds smarter with a .ai domain, Anguilla collects.

The Parallel That Came Before

This isn’t entirely unprecedented. Tuvalu — a Pacific island nation — did the same thing with .tv two decades ago. Television networks and streaming platforms made .tv desirable, and Tuvalu collected licensing fees. The difference is scale.
The AI boom is orders of magnitude larger than the cable TV era it replaced.


What This Actually Tells Us About AI

The Anguilla story is interesting as a revenue tale. But it’s more interesting as a signal.
When 28% of all new tech startups specifically choose a domain extension to signal AI credibility — when companies pay $1.2 million for a two-letter combination followed by .ai — it tells you something about how the industry sees this moment. AI isn’t a feature. It’s an identity.
Brands want to be associated with it at the domain level, before anyone visits the site, before a single product decision is made.
A small island accidentally captured that identity in 1995.
They didn’t build a model, train a dataset, or write a single line of code.
They just happened to be Anguilla.
Sometimes geography is destiny.
In this case, alphabetical destiny paid for an airport.
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Nitin Chhabria
Engineer → Founder → Product Leader | Ad Tech · CTV · RTB · Monetisation · Programmatic · Immersive Rich Media Ads | Building with AI | 14 yrs in Tech · 6 yrs in AdTech

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