How a Dot-AI Domain Became a Digital Goldmine for a Tiny Caribbean Island

While Silicon Valley giants pour billions into the artificial intelligence arms race, the unlikely and perhaps biggest winner per capita is a tiny Caribbean island with a population of just 16,000. Anguilla, a British overseas territory known for its pristine beaches, has struck digital gold thanks to a two-letter asset it was assigned decades ago: its ".ai" country code domain.


In a remarkable twist of technological fate, the ".ai" country code top-level domain (ccTLD), assigned to Anguilla in 1995, has become the most coveted digital real estate in the tech world. As companies from fledgling startups to behemoths like Google and X rush to brand themselves as leaders in artificial intelligence, they are all flocking to register a ".ai" web address.


And for every registration and renewal, the government of Anguilla gets a payment.

The results have been nothing short of transformative for the island's economy. Before the AI boom, which kicked into high gear with the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, the ".ai" domain generated a respectable but modest income. In 2021, it brought in about $7.4 million.



By 2023, that figure had quadrupled to over $32 million, accounting for more than 20% of the government's entire annual revenue. Projections for 2024 are even more staggering, with some estimates putting the potential income at over $100 million—a figure that would represent roughly a third of the territory's budget.


"It was just luck," Premier Ellis Webster has stated, noting that the island, whose name is said to derive from the word for "eel," was assigned the domain long before AI became a household acronym.

This unexpected windfall is having a tangible impact on the lives of Anguillans. The government is using the funds to:

Expand the island's international airport.

Provide free healthcare for senior citizens.

Fund new vocational and technology training centers.

Bolster disaster recovery funds in the hurricane-prone region.

The explosive demand—registrations have surged from around 144,000 in 2022 to well over half a million today—recently prompted Anguilla to transition the management of the domain registry. For decades, it was run by a local tech entrepreneur, Vince Cate. Now, to ensure the security and scalability required, the operations are handled by Identity Digital, a U.S.-based domain infrastructure firm, with Anguilla retaining ownership and the lion's share of the revenue.


Anguilla's story is a stunning case study in how digital assets can create immense value in the modern economy. Without a single AI data center or research lab on its shores, this small island has found itself at the financial center of the biggest tech revolution of our time, proving that in the digital age, a fortune can be made not just from innovation, but from a fortunate accident of geography and acronyms.