The Anguilla .ai domain is budgeted to bring the government EC$253.6 million (about US$94 million) in 2026, roughly 42% of the total revenue it expected that year. Slovenia’s .si works differently. Registrars pay a flat €10 a year to Register.si, part of the public institute ARNES. The 2026 rush of new .si names therefore creates no comparable windfall.
The query “anguilla ai domain” gets about 90 searches a month in the US and 250 worldwide (Ahrefs, October 5, 2026). Slovenia entered the story in 2026: Register.si recorded 46,066 new .si names in September 2026, against 2,726 in September 2025. Some media then speculated that Slovenia would earn millions.
This article compiles Anguilla’s .ai revenue from the government’s own budget documents and explains who collects the money. It then sets that against how the .si registry is funded. Where we do our own arithmetic, we label it.
Anguilla .ai domain revenue by year
Anguilla’s official budget Estimates show .ai revenue rising from EC$86.8 million in 2023 to a projected EC$219.2 million in 2025. The 2026 budget assumes EC$253.6 million, about 42% of all the revenue the government expects to collect that year.
The figures come from revenue line 13515, “Domain Name Registration,” in the Government of Anguilla’s 2026 Estimates. Anguilla’s fiscal year is the calendar year. The Eastern Caribbean dollar is pegged at EC$2.70 to US$1, so EC$253.6 million is about US$93.9 million.
| Year | .ai revenue (EC$) | Share of total revenue | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | EC$86.8 million | 21.0% | Actual | 2025 Estimates |
| 2024 | EC$104.3 million | 22.2% | Actual | 2026 Estimates |
| 2025 | EC$219.2 million | 38.9% | Projection (November 2025) | 2026 Estimates |
| 2026 | EC$253.6 million | 42.4% | Budget | 2026 Estimates |
| 2027 | EC$291.3 million | Not stated | Forward estimate | 2026 Estimates |
| 2028 | EC$294.2 million | Not stated | Forward estimate | 2026 Estimates |
The shares are our calculation from the revenue totals in the same Estimates. The 2025 figure is the government’s end-of-year projection from November 2025 and has not been audited. The 2027 and 2028 figures are forward estimates and do not bind the government.
Receipts have beaten recent budgets by wide margins. The 2024 budget assumed EC$64.05 million, and the year closed at EC$104.3 million. The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank put the 2024 figure at 70.5% of non-tax revenue and 7.1% of GDP. For 2025, the budget assumed EC$132 million, while the November 2025 projection reached EC$219.2 million.
In May 2024, an IMF Country Focus said the government expected .ai to settle at around 15% of total revenue. The latest Estimates point the other way.
In March 2026, local newspaper Anguilla Focus, citing Ministry of Finance monthly figures, reported a 2025 actual of EC$230.5 million. In July it reported EC$196.8 million for the first half of 2026. We have not seen the official documents behind those two figures, so the table uses the Estimates.
Two other numbers circulate widely. Several outlets report EC$260.5 million as .ai revenue. But in the 2026 Budget Address, that figure is the 2025 forecast for the whole “Sales of goods and services” category, which includes .ai.
The same address says .ai revenues are projected to contribute “nearly forty percent of total non-tax revenue,” a figure the Estimates do not match. By our calculation from the 2026 Estimates, .ai is about 82% of budgeted non-tax revenue (EC$253.6 million of EC$309.7 million). Its share of total revenue is much closer to the speech’s figure: about 39% in the 2025 projection and 42% in the 2026 budget.
How the money flows from .ai registrants to Anguilla
A .ai registrant pays a registrar, which pays the registry’s wholesale fee. The registry operator then passes most of that fee to the Government of Anguilla. Since January 15, 2025, the operator has been Identity Digital, a US company.
- Registrant to registrar. The buyer pays a retail price, which each registrar sets for itself.
- Registrar to registry. Since March 5, 2026, the wholesale fee is US$80 a year with a mandatory 2-year minimum, so US$160 per registration or renewal. Before that it was US$70 a year, or US$140 for two years, according to Domain Name Wire.
- Registry operator. As reported in October 2024, Identity Digital won a five-year, competitively tendered revenue-share contract with a minimum revenue guarantee.
- Government. Identity Digital gives about 90% of .ai revenue to Anguilla, according to former administrator Vince Cate, as reported by Domain Name Wire in February 2025.
Before 2025, .ai was administered locally, and Vince Cate was involved in running it from the 1990s. The registry moved to Identity Digital’s systems on January 15, 2025.
The number of names paying those fees keeps growing. Domain Name Stat data, cited by Sherwood News, show .ai passing 1 million registered names around January 2, 2026. A year earlier, on January 2, 2025, the official count was 598,007, according to Domain Name Wire.
The Government of Anguilla announced the milestone on Facebook, as reported by Domain Name Wire on January 28, 2026. It said .ai revenue had supported airport and road development, tax relief and health services.
What Tuvalu’s .tv shows
Tuvalu’s .tv shows the same model earlier: by the end of its contract, Verisign was reportedly paying Tuvalu about US$5 million a year. GoDaddy Registry won the next contract in December 2021 and signed it in March 2022, on terms that are not public.
Verisign bought the company that ran .tv on December 31, 2001. On December 14, 2021, Domain Name Wire reported that Tuvalu’s government had named GoDaddy Registry the winner of a new tender. Verisign said it declined to take part “for business reasons.” At the time, .tv had about 500,000 names.
Domain Incite, the source of the US$5 million figure, reported that GoDaddy Registry signed the contract on March 30, 2022, and that its terms have not been disclosed.
How the .si registry works in Slovenia
Slovenia’s .si is run by Register.si, which operates within ARNES, a public infrastructure institute founded by the Government of Slovenia. Every registrar pays the same registry fee of €10 per year, excluding VAT. ARNES books the income as a market activity that must cover its own costs.
.si is Slovenia’s country-code domain. For AI companies it reads as SuperIntelligence. That reading is our own framing and has no official status. It is also why .si now gets compared with .ai.
The Register.si tariff for registrars sets the fee. It has been valid since January 1, 2023, and the fee applies to each year of registration or renewal. Registrants buy through registrars rather than from the registry. On October 5, 2026, the Register.si homepage listed 94 registrars and about 306,000 .si domains.
The ARNES work program for 2026, adopted on January 20, 2026, describes domain registration as a market activity. Under ARNES’s founding act, the government does not cover any deficit on it. Register.si also runs the top-level DNS servers for .si. Market sales revenue from the activity was €1,653,304 in 2024 (actual, cash basis, excluding interest). ARNES estimated €1,708,570 for 2025 and planned €1,603,000 for 2026.
Including interest, ARNES planned €1,648,000 in total market revenue for 2026 against €1,585,599 in planned market expenditure. The plan expected 176,000 to 178,000 .si domains by the end of 2026, up from just over 172,000 at the end of 2025. The count passed 300,000 in early October, so the surge is not in any official ARNES figure yet.
Register.si addressed the revenue question in its notice of September 24, 2026, which marked 200,000 .si names. It restated the €10 price and wrote that media speculation about “million-scale earnings for Slovenia due to increased interest in .si” has “no real basis” (our translation from Slovenian). The same notice advised holders of trademarks, slogans and company names without a .si domain to register one as soon as possible.
What the 2026 .si surge is worth
By our estimate, September 2026’s 46,066 new .si registrations are worth €460,660 in registry fees at 1-year terms, before VAT and costs. That is about 28% of the €1,648,000 in total market revenue ARNES planned for 2026, and a small fraction of Anguilla’s .ai budget.
The arithmetic is 46,066 names × €10. Multi-year registrations would bring in more cash up front, and Register.si does not publish the term mix. The estimate also ignores the cost of handling the extra volume. Domain Name Wire reached a lower figure on September 28, 2026. Working from zone growth of 190,000 to 219,000 names, it put September’s extra registrations at approximately €300,000.
The jump itself is large. Register.si’s monthly registration data show 2,726 new .si names in September 2025 and 3,515 in August 2026. September 2026 brought 46,066, about 17 times the level of a year earlier.
Even a generous upper bound stays modest. If all of the roughly 306,000 .si names renewed for one year at €10, registry fees would total about €3.06 million before VAT and costs (our arithmetic).
The gap comes from how the two registries are set up. At wholesale, .ai costs US$80 a year, and most of that goes to Anguilla’s government. The .si fee is €10, and it stays inside a public institute whose domain activity must pay its own way. Names registered for one year in September 2026 also come up for renewal in September 2027, so this cohort’s revenue is not yet recurring.
.ai, .tv and .si registry models compared
The three registries share a country-code origin but differ in who runs them, how prices are set and who keeps the money. Only .ai appears as its own revenue line in a national budget.
| Country | ccTLD | Registry operator | Price model | Latest revenue | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anguilla | .ai | Government of Anguilla; Identity Digital operates the registry since January 15, 2025 | US$80 per year wholesale, 2-year minimum (US$160) since March 5, 2026; about 90% to the government (reported) | EC$253.6 million budgeted for 2026; EC$219.2 million projected for 2025 | Government of Anguilla 2026 Estimates; Domain Name Wire |
| Tuvalu | .tv | Government of Tuvalu; GoDaddy Registry (contract signed March 30, 2022) | Terms not disclosed | Not disclosed; Verisign paid about US$5 million a year by the end of its contract | Domain Incite |
| Slovenia | .si | Register.si within ARNES, a public infrastructure institute | €10 per year flat to all registrars, excluding VAT (since January 1, 2023) | €1,653,304 ARNES market sales revenue (2024 actual, cash basis, excluding interest) | ARNES 2026 work program; Register.si |
Anguilla treats .ai as a public revenue source. Tuvalu licenses .tv to a private operator on terms it does not publish. Slovenia runs .si at cost through a public institute. For more background on how country-code domains are delegated, see our guide to what a ccTLD is.
What this means for domain buyers
A .ai name carries a higher registry fee because that fee funds the Government of Anguilla. A .si name costs €10 a year at the registry because ARNES runs registration as a market activity that covers its own costs. For domain buyers, the registry model shapes price and stability more than headlines do.
- .ai prices can change. The wholesale fee has been US$160 for the 2-year minimum since March 5, 2026, up from US$140, a 14% rise set by the registry. Our guide to .ai domains covers current rules and prices.
- .si registry pricing has been flat since 2023. Every registrar pays €10 per year, excluding VAT, and retail prices vary by registrar. Google treats .si as a signal for Slovenia, while it treats .ai as generic, which matters for sites aimed at a global audience. Our .si domain guide explains the trade-offs.
- Aftermarket prices are separate. A name that someone else already holds is priced by its holder, not by the registry. buysidomains.si sells .si names at fixed aftermarket prices, which have no link to the €10 registry fee.
For a global AI startup, the extension choice comes down to brand fit, search treatment and renewal cost. Our AI startup domain guide compares the options. Anguilla’s .ai revenue says a lot about the island’s budget and little about the value of any single name. No extension’s revenue story guarantees that a name will gain value, and nothing here is investment advice.
