The government of the small British Overseas Territory of Anguilla has signed a deal domain name registration company Identity Digital to help manage the Caribbean island's increasingly popular .ai country level domain.
Registrations in the .ai has spiked four-fold over the past five years due to the artificial intelligence boom that shows no sign of abating.
This can be seen in the sites of companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic's Claude.
Anguilla's government uses the gov.ai domain name.
The .ai registrations are a major source of revenue for the government of Anguilla.
Earlier this year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) noted that in 2023, the surge in .ai domain name registrations brought in US$32 million in revenue, which is just over 20 per cent of the Anguillan government's annual tota revenue.
Anguilla has now turned to Identity Digital whose platform is used by the Public Interest Registry (PIR) that manages the not-for-profit .org, along with Australia's .au and Puerto Rico's .pr country level domains.
Anguilla's premier, Ellis Webster, said the deal with Identity Digital means the island nation and the registry operator will be "responsible stewards of .ai, guaranteeing its stability, security and global prominence."
Earlier this month, the British government transferred sovereignty over the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean to the Mauritian government.
Chagos Islands was formerly known as the British Indian Ocean Territory, with its country code top level domain being .io.
The .io ccTLD has been very popular with tech companies like Github and startups.
However, as the International Standardisation Organisation (ISO) will remove the IO country code, registrations in .io will cease.
Eventually, existing .io will also be retired, although no time frame for that has been specified as of yet.
-1.jpg&w=100&c=1&s=0)
.png&w=100&c=1&s=0)
