2023 has seen a notable surge within the transactional worth of .ai domains. Originally, “.ai” is the nation code top-level area (ccTLD) for Anguilla. However, attributable to “AI” being the abbreviation for Artificial Intelligence – arguably probably the most disruptive trade of our era – the area extension has gained important tech relevance.
These gross sales are heralding a brand new digital gold rush. (All quantities quoted beneath are in USD.)
October tenth, 2023, entered the report books when the area title you.ai was acquired for $700,000. Initially it was believed that it might have been bought by You.com, a search engine that closely leverages the facility of Generative AI. After a number of days it was revealed that the area title was bought by Dharmesh Shah, the Founder of HubSpot. He isn’t any stranger to splurging on domains, having bought Connect.com for $8,000,000 in 2022.
If you go to you.ai as we speak, it shares the identical content material as Dharmesh.ai.
Compare the above quantity to the earlier report of $258,888 for Stack.ai in August, 2023. Per week earlier than that NPC.ai bought for $250,000.
The stats are additionally spectacular when reviewing transactional quantity.
Today, NameBio confirmed 2,160 .ai gross sales 12 months so far value $4.5m, in distinction to 2022, there have been 718 whole .ai area title gross sales value $878,700.
From wanting on the 2022 gross sales knowledge the best recorded sale was for $65,098 for the area Arena.ai, different notable mentions included Ledger.ai for $33,333 and $30,050 for Predictive.ai.
Let’s evaluate this to 2019, once I acquired Unite.ai for $537. At the time I believed that deep reinforcement studying algorithms would ultimately result in an AI explosion, and it solely made sense that the AI trade would undertake the .ai extension.
This adopted the identical playbook that was proven through the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) increase of 2017, when each blockchain and crypto firm adopted the .io area extension. An extension that was quickly after adopted by main tech startups.
Hence Unite.ai was born, and it serves for instance of the value distinction between 2019 and 2023. Below are further examples primarily based by myself private acquisitions.
it must be famous that my objective was by no means to accumulate an in depth .ai area title portfolio, the objective was as a substitute to accumulate a community of brandable domains, and to associate with main AI firms to launch market options primarily based on the subsequent wave of technological innovation.
An straightforward worth comparability, is when anticipating that genomics would want deep studying to scale, I acquired Genes.ai for $677. Compare that to Gene.ai that bought in 2022 for $25,553.
Another notable area that I acquired was Genius.ai in late 2020 for $16,025. At the time I supposed to construct a recent strategy at a search engine that may use deep reinforcement studying with human suggestions.
Fast ahead to as we speak and a non-public provide was just lately made to accumulate the Genius.ai area for $500,000.
My final worth comparability is in May 2020, I participated in a bidding frenzy, whereby I ended up outbidding everybody to win Think.ai for $21,988, on the time this was reported to be the 4th highest reported .ai sale of all time. It is troublesome to think about that this area title would promote for lower than 10x that in 2023.
It must be fascinating to see how lengthy it takes earlier than the market hears of the primary million greenback .ai area title acquisition.