AI is threatening to upturn the prevailing economic order, disrupt jobs, and create entirely new business opportunities, but it’s having some unexpected effects on relative bystanders to the whole revolution as well.
The tiny Caribbean territory of Anguilla, with a population of just 15,000, is now making an estimated 25 percent of its annual revenue through the money it makes from the registration of .ai domain names. These domain names have exploded in popularity over the last couple of years as the AI revolution took hold and AI companies wanted to establish their credentials with a .ai domain. As luck would have it, Anguilla decades ago had been allotted the .ai domain name by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), which is responsible for giving all countries a unique top level domain name.
While the prices of domains can vary, registrars like GoDaddy or NameCheap pay Anguilla a fixed price for selling .ai domain names. This has risen to as much as $140 per two-year .ai domain registration.
The .ai domain had been quietly generating Anguilla income for a while. In 2021, Anguilla had brought in $7.4 million from .ai domain registrations. This number rose slightly in 2022. But in 2023, the number was expected to reach $25-30 million, driven by the demand for .ai domain names. Now the total recurring annual revenue for Anguilla was just $107 million in 2023, which meant that its stroke of luck of having the .ai domain name is now accounting for nearly 25 percent of its overall revenue.
Anguilla is a British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean, lying to the east of Puerto Rico. The main island of Anguilla is 26 km long and 5 km wide at its widest point. The total territory, with some other uninhabited islands, has an area of 91 square kilometers. Anguilla had a population of 15,753 in 2023. Its economy relies largely on tourism.
And it’s had the good fortune of having been allotted a .ai domain name based on what it’s called. Legend says that the island was named Anguilla by Christopher Columbus, after the Latin word leaning “eel”, which was a reference to the island’s slender shape. And five centuries later, the choice of the name has led to an unexpected windfall for the island’s inhabitants.