AI now rivals tourism in Anguilla
AI has made a lot of people very rich in the last couple of years, but for a small Caribbean island it has been transformative. So much so that Anguilla now generates around a third of its government revenue through AI, without writing a single line of code.
In the 1980s, when IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) was distributing two-letter geographic domains, Anguilla was fortunate to be assigned .ai. That good fortune has turned into a fortune, with a massive influx of domain registrations over the past two years significantly boosting the island’s economy.
The boom in .ai domain sales was sparked by the arrival of ChatGPT in November 2022. “Over the next five months, our sales increased almost fourfold,” Vince Cate, who manages domain registrations for the Anguillan government. said IEEE Spectrum.
“Then they kind of stabilized at this new, much higher level. It’s just crazy: we already represent about a third of the government’s budget.
The island earns about $3 million a month from .ai registrations, according to Cate, but he predicts that figure will at least double as domains are renewed. “We’ve been running the domains for two years, and so all our money is now going into the new domains,” he said.
“And if we stay at that level of $3 million per month for new domains, when the renewals go into effect in a year, we’ll go to $6 million per month.”
Island economy
For Anguilla, a British Overseas Territory with a population of around 16,000, this income level is extremely significant. This amounts to $2,250 per person per year, even at current income rates.
The island measures just 35 square miles and relies on tourism, offshore banking and fishing for much of its GDP, estimated at $300 million in 2020 by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, well before the start of the AI bonanza. If enrollment continues to grow as Cate predicts, it alone would bring in $72 million by 2025.
Domain Deals
Anguilla is not the first island to benefit from its two-letter domain. The island of Tuvalu has benefited from the .tv domain it was allocated, but according to Cate, there is a crucial difference between how Tuvalu and Anguilla have handled their in-demand domains.
While Tuvalu has long worked with commercial partners such as Verisign and GoDaddy to license the .tv domain, Anguilla manages the registrations itself. “We do it locally,” Cate told IEEE Spectrum. “So the government gets almost all the money. And that’s not what was happening in Tuvalu, was it? Most of the money was not going to the country.
More than anyone, Anguilla residents hope that the AI boom does not turn into a short-lived bubble.
