The island of Anguilla, located in the Lesser Antilles, is poised to rake in millions of dollars. This, thanks to the strong growth of the AI sector, and in particular the increase in requests for “.ai” domain names.
The island of Anguilla is famous for its typical Caribbean landscapes: white sand beaches and crystal clear waters where it is good to swim. As Britain’s main overseas territory, it is also famous for giving wealthy individuals the opportunity to obtain Anguillian citizenship without necessarily needing to reside there. This nationality is distinct from the British one, and the economic advantages are interesting to consider for the concerned, as well as for this small territory. After being tipped as one of the next countries to adopt Bitcoin as their official currency, this tiny island is poised to hit the jackpot without lifting a finger thanks to AI.
A new gold rush: .ai domain names
Initially, anything ending in .ai on the web redirected to sites related to Anguilla. Indeed, this extension relates to the initials of the island, but things are changing little by little. Due to the explosion in the popularity of artificial intelligence, the .ai (Artificial Intelligence) extension is increasingly requested by players in this sector.
Vince Gate, the man in charge of allocating this particular domain name, shared this sudden increase with Bloomberg. The number of these requests doubled just in 2022 and therefore reached the staggering threshold of 285,000 registrations. This trend accelerated significantly after the launch of the AI model ChatGPT by the company OpenAI.
Millions of dollars at stake
The value of .ai domain names goes beyond their rarity. They are also very attractive to tech giants and the many start-ups working in the AI sector. Big fish like X.com (new name for Twitter), NVIDIA, Microsoft or Google have already registered their own domain names with this extension for all their projects directly or indirectly related to AI.
If in 2022, Anguilla had managed to collect a tidy sum of 6.9 million dollars thanks to this scheme, this sum could increase to 30 million in the year 2023. That is almost 10.5% of the island’s GDP, which was estimated at 288 million dollars by the United Nations in 2021. Sacred contrast! Previously, it was necessary for a company to be domiciled in Anguilla if it wanted to register a .ai domain name. In 2009, this rule was abandoned, and we can say that it was quite a stroke of flair!
If the news still seems absurd at first glance, there is no doubt that Anguilla is savoring its new economic destiny. This success is reminiscent of that of the Polynesian islands of Tuvalu, which have benefited from the economic benefits of .tv domain names for many years.
Source : BFM TV
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