With so much interest in artificial intelligence of late, it was suggested by a NamePros member that I should take a look at the .ai domain extension.
While it is almost certainly true that .com is the dominant extension for large, established artificial intelligence companies, .ai has found traction too, particularly among some AI startups.
By the way, in case you missed it, the
What is .AI?
The .ai extension is the country code for Anguilla, a British Overseas Territory located in the Caribbean. Anguilla is located near and to the east of Puerto Rico and the British Virgin Islands.
The population of Anguilla is less than 20,000, and the total land area is only about 91 square kilometres. With incredible natural beauty, the most important industry is tourism, along with offshore incorporation and banking services.
While most interest is in second level domain names with the .ai extension, it is also possible to buy at the third level, with off.ai, com.ai, net.ai, and org.ai available.
Not Cheap To Register
While the .ai extension is not restricted, and anyone can register for use in any sector, it is not inexpensive. TLD-List shows that annual registration and renewals start at about $65 per year, and are considerably more at many registrars. The registry insists on two year registration periods as well.
Almost No Abuse
While high costs deter some investors, a benefit is that high-cost TLDs usually have very low levels of abuse, and that is true for .ai. SPAMHAUS show just 0.3% of active domains are ‘bad’, with a superb badness score of 0.01, with little spam or other abuse.
The Big .AI Sales
Listed below are the .ai extension sales of $25,000 or more recorded in NameBio, along with the year of the sale.
Most of the noteworthy retail sales are from the last few years. Somewhat surprisingly, though, if we look at total sales volume, 2022 saw a dip from the previous three years according to my start of year analysis.
Here is a link to all NameBio-listed .ai extension sales of $1000 and up.
Characteristics of $1000+ .AI Sales
At time of writing, NameBio had, over all time periods, 6089 .ai sales in total ($100+), with 1107 at $1000 and up, and 61 above $10,000.
I took a look at the $1000 and up sales from the last 3 years only. There were 662 sales totalling $2.5 million in dollar volume. You can see the list at this NameBio link. I observed the following:
Sales Price Distribution
For names that sold for $1000 and more over the past three years, I looked at the price distribution. Results below, based on NameBio reported sales, indicate that the majority of .ai names sell for less than $3000, although some sell at higher prices. 48.2% of the sales were in the range $1000 to $1999.
What About Sell-Through Rate?
According to Dofo Advanced Search, on Feb. 8, 2023 there were 15,253 .ai domain names listed for sale at a marketplace included in Dofo. NameBio shows 317 .ai sales during the past 12 months when one includes sales of $500 and above. Combining the data, suggests an apparent sell-through rate of 2.1%.
If one looks at all sales $100 and up, there were 846 .ai sales on NameBio during the past twelve months, suggesting an apparent sell-through rate of 5.6%.
These sell-through rates are substantially higher than for most other extensions, that have apparent sell-through rates of 1% and less. Keep in mind that unreported sales would increase these rates.
However, the high holding cost must be taken into account. If one multiplies the 5.6% STR times the average price of $1230, one obtains $68, similar to the holding cost.
I used the Dofo number for sale, and the sales dollar volume from the most recent 12 months according to NameBio, to compute a current DVPL, Dollar Volume Per Listing. DVPL came out as about $68 for the most recent 12 months, impressive until one remembers that the renewal cost is about that as well. The industry wide apparent DVPL is about $7.25. Keep in mind that NameBio don’t report the majority of retail sales, so the true value of the DVPL will be more.
How Are Domainers Pricing .AI Domain Names?
I used Dofo Advanced Search to see how domainers are pricing their .ai domain names, obtaining the results below.
The distribution is surprising, in that 45.9% were priced between $25,000 and $29,999. Whether that is because one, or a few, investors hold many of the .ai names and price in that range, or just happened across many investors, I have not seen such a concentration in other extensions I examined.
The highest asking price is $10 million, shared by a few names. Interestingly, the name of the Canadian Prime Minister, JustinTrudeau is one of those names.
There are 43 .ai names priced at $1 million or more.
The Monthly AI Auctions
The .ai extension does not send domain names to be auctioned to the usual expired auction marketplaces, or Park.io. Rather, starting in fall 2018, the .ai registry performs a monthly auction of expired .ai names itself. The auction site is auctions.whois.ai.
It is free to create an account at auctions.whois.ai, but you will need to place a deposit to bid on domain names. Here is information on the auction process. Also read the AI Auction FAQs.
I suspect it is likely that while most bidders are domain investors, there are also some end users bidding in the .ai auctions as well. The highest auction at Whois.AI was $65,098 for arena.ai in September 2022.
AI Extension Use
A simple indicator of the use of an extension is to see how many results a Google search on
Facebook, Google, Uber and Microsoft all own their name in the .ai extension, and use it in redirection to relevant artificial intelligence content. Amazon owns their name in .ai as well, but just forwards it to their main site.
Open.ai takes the user to a site to generate images using artificial intelligence – it is fun, try it out.
A few interesting developed sites on the .ai extension include autonomous.ai, cohere.ai, clarity.ai, HomeBot.ai, shield.ai, typecast, copymatic, and DeepLearning.ai.
NamePros Discussion
@Jim Holleran recently started a NamePros discussion thread for .ai.
I have not personally invested in .ai domain names yet. I particularly welcome comments from NamePros members who have invested in .ai.
Update: Feb. 17, 2023. I added a sentence indicating the required two year registration period.
While it is almost certainly true that .com is the dominant extension for large, established artificial intelligence companies, .ai has found traction too, particularly among some AI startups.
By the way, in case you missed it, the
AI.com domain name recently started redirecting to OpenAI ChatGPT. The sale of the domain name took place in 2021, with Saw acting as the broker, and OpenAI were the buyer.What is .AI?
The .ai extension is the country code for Anguilla, a British Overseas Territory located in the Caribbean. Anguilla is located near and to the east of Puerto Rico and the British Virgin Islands.
The population of Anguilla is less than 20,000, and the total land area is only about 91 square kilometres. With incredible natural beauty, the most important industry is tourism, along with offshore incorporation and banking services.
While most interest is in second level domain names with the .ai extension, it is also possible to buy at the third level, with off.ai, com.ai, net.ai, and org.ai available.
Not Cheap To Register
While the .ai extension is not restricted, and anyone can register for use in any sector, it is not inexpensive. TLD-List shows that annual registration and renewals start at about $65 per year, and are considerably more at many registrars. The registry insists on two year registration periods as well.
Almost No Abuse
While high costs deter some investors, a benefit is that high-cost TLDs usually have very low levels of abuse, and that is true for .ai. SPAMHAUS show just 0.3% of active domains are ‘bad’, with a superb badness score of 0.01, with little spam or other abuse.
The Big .AI Sales
Listed below are the .ai extension sales of $25,000 or more recorded in NameBio, along with the year of the sale.
- expert.ai, $107,495, 2020
- music.ai, $101,500, 2018
- arena.ai, $65,098, 2022
- samur.ai, $50,000, 2021
- analytics.ai, $50,000, 2019
- personal.ai, $48,636, 2021
- growth.ai, $45,000, 2021
- human.ai, $45,000, 2017
- workflow.ai, $35,000, 2023
- ledger.ai, $33,333, 2022
- predictive.ai, $30,050, 2022
- board.ai, $29,522, 2021
- conv.ai, $28,000, 2021
- face.ai, $26,916, 2022
- gene.ai, $25,553, 2022
- wow.ai, $25,050, 2022
- avatar.ai, $25,000, 2022
- content.ai, $25,000, 2019
Most of the noteworthy retail sales are from the last few years. Somewhat surprisingly, though, if we look at total sales volume, 2022 saw a dip from the previous three years according to my start of year analysis.
Here is a link to all NameBio-listed .ai extension sales of $1000 and up.
Characteristics of $1000+ .AI Sales
At time of writing, NameBio had, over all time periods, 6089 .ai sales in total ($100+), with 1107 at $1000 and up, and 61 above $10,000.
I took a look at the $1000 and up sales from the last 3 years only. There were 662 sales totalling $2.5 million in dollar volume. You can see the list at this NameBio link. I observed the following:
- Most were single English word names.
- While some were tech terms, more were common words.
- Only 3 included numbers, and none had a hyphen.
- Almost 75% of sales were names 4 to 8 characters in length, see graph below.
- There were 15 animals among the sales, including eagle, elephant, orca, gorilla, coyote, monkey, duck, and penguin.
Sales Price Distribution
For names that sold for $1000 and more over the past three years, I looked at the price distribution. Results below, based on NameBio reported sales, indicate that the majority of .ai names sell for less than $3000, although some sell at higher prices. 48.2% of the sales were in the range $1000 to $1999.
What About Sell-Through Rate?
According to Dofo Advanced Search, on Feb. 8, 2023 there were 15,253 .ai domain names listed for sale at a marketplace included in Dofo. NameBio shows 317 .ai sales during the past 12 months when one includes sales of $500 and above. Combining the data, suggests an apparent sell-through rate of 2.1%.
If one looks at all sales $100 and up, there were 846 .ai sales on NameBio during the past twelve months, suggesting an apparent sell-through rate of 5.6%.
These sell-through rates are substantially higher than for most other extensions, that have apparent sell-through rates of 1% and less. Keep in mind that unreported sales would increase these rates.
However, the high holding cost must be taken into account. If one multiplies the 5.6% STR times the average price of $1230, one obtains $68, similar to the holding cost.
I used the Dofo number for sale, and the sales dollar volume from the most recent 12 months according to NameBio, to compute a current DVPL, Dollar Volume Per Listing. DVPL came out as about $68 for the most recent 12 months, impressive until one remembers that the renewal cost is about that as well. The industry wide apparent DVPL is about $7.25. Keep in mind that NameBio don’t report the majority of retail sales, so the true value of the DVPL will be more.
How Are Domainers Pricing .AI Domain Names?
I used Dofo Advanced Search to see how domainers are pricing their .ai domain names, obtaining the results below.
The distribution is surprising, in that 45.9% were priced between $25,000 and $29,999. Whether that is because one, or a few, investors hold many of the .ai names and price in that range, or just happened across many investors, I have not seen such a concentration in other extensions I examined.
The highest asking price is $10 million, shared by a few names. Interestingly, the name of the Canadian Prime Minister, JustinTrudeau is one of those names.
There are 43 .ai names priced at $1 million or more.
The Monthly AI Auctions
The .ai extension does not send domain names to be auctioned to the usual expired auction marketplaces, or Park.io. Rather, starting in fall 2018, the .ai registry performs a monthly auction of expired .ai names itself. The auction site is auctions.whois.ai.
It is free to create an account at auctions.whois.ai, but you will need to place a deposit to bid on domain names. Here is information on the auction process. Also read the AI Auction FAQs.
- The minimum deposit is $100. There are procedures for getting deposits back, but they involve delays and charges.
- The auctions start on the fourth Friday of each month at noon Anguilla time. Anguilla is 1 hour ahead of Eastern Time Zone.
- Unless you are considered a trusted bidder, having bid and paid for auctioned names over the preceding 6 months, you also need to have on deposit at least 25% the amount that your are bidding.
- The bidding period is 10 days. If there is a bid at the end, it extends the auction by one hour.
- The minimum starting bid is $120.
- The investor bids a maximum amount, and the system automatically applies a bid $10 higher than the previous high bid. For example, if you bid $250, the highest other bidder is $160, it will bid $170 on your behalf, and then bid again if a new bid tops your bid.
- You have a period of 2 weeks to complete payment after the auction finishes. If the person winning an auction does not pay, their account balance forfeits $100. The domain name is placed in the next month’s auction.
- After you win a domain in the .ai auction, and pay for it, you transfer it to the registrar of your choice.
- They have licensed the software used by Park.io, so if you are familiar with auctions there, it will look familiar.
- Names that receive no bids will expire and be released one day after the normal auction closing.
I suspect it is likely that while most bidders are domain investors, there are also some end users bidding in the .ai auctions as well. The highest auction at Whois.AI was $65,098 for arena.ai in September 2022.
AI Extension Use
A simple indicator of the use of an extension is to see how many results a Google search on
site:.ai brings up. For AI there are 39.9 million results, much less than the 594 million CO and 288 million IO, but more than the 16.6 million GG and 5.8 million VC.Facebook, Google, Uber and Microsoft all own their name in the .ai extension, and use it in redirection to relevant artificial intelligence content. Amazon owns their name in .ai as well, but just forwards it to their main site.
Open.ai takes the user to a site to generate images using artificial intelligence – it is fun, try it out.
A few interesting developed sites on the .ai extension include autonomous.ai, cohere.ai, clarity.ai, HomeBot.ai, shield.ai, typecast, copymatic, and DeepLearning.ai.
NamePros Discussion
@Jim Holleran recently started a NamePros discussion thread for .ai.
I have not personally invested in .ai domain names yet. I particularly welcome comments from NamePros members who have invested in .ai.
Update: Feb. 17, 2023. I added a sentence indicating the required two year registration period.
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