The Caribbean island of Anguilla has radically increased its budget revenues over several years due to the growth of the artificial intelligence market. Meanwhile, there are no large AI startups in Anguilla itself; All income comes exclusively from selling domain names.
Anguilla is an autonomous region under the formal sovereignty of Great Britain, consisting of an island of the same name with an area of 91 square kilometers (about 10 times smaller than Moscow within the Moscow Ring Road) and a dozen and a half very small islands. The population of Anguilla is 18 thousand people.
The Internet top-level domain in Anguilla is ai (short for the island of Anguilla). In English, the same abbreviation stands for Artificial Intelligence (AI – Artificial Intelligence). For this reason, tens of thousands of AI development companies are registering locations in the Anguilla region.
If at the end of 2022 a little more than 100 thousand domains were registered in the .ai zone, then by mid-2023 there were already more than 350 thousand, and by mid-2025 – more than 850 thousand. Now count them Transgression 1.2 million, increasing by several thousand every day.
In 2025 Anguilla receive With domain sales in excess of $85 million. A year ago, this amount was 39 million, and, for example, in 2022 – before the explosive growth of the AI market – only 7.7 million.
Domain registration prices It starts $150-$200, but domains containing the most common words (for example, you.ai or cloud.ai) can fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction.
The sale of domains brings the state’s budget slightly below its main traditional industry – tourism (its share in GDP). previously It reached 37%). The island’s GDP, which barely exceeded $300 million in 2022, will reach $456 million in 2024.
To manage domain names more effectively, the Anguilla authorities entered into a five-year agreement in 2024 with the American company Identity Digital, which specializes in domain name registries. Under this agreement, Identity Digital sells names and collects subscription fees, taking as a commission, according to unofficial data, about 10% of the proceeds – the rest goes to Anguilla’s budget.
approach like books The BBC must allow Angela to avoid the fate of another island nation, Tuvalu, which failed to make full use of its capabilities in a similar situation.
Tuvalu is a small atoll in the Pacific Ocean and has a .tv top-level domain. In the late 1990s, he transferred the rights to sell domain names to VeriSign for a fixed annual fee. Then it was two million dollars annually (later the amount increased to five million). Later, against the backdrop of the rapid development of the Internet, the Tuvalu authorities admitted that this money was “mere pennies.”