The AI boom makes millions for an unlikely industry player: Anguilla

Emma Bubola

Artificial intelligence’s (AI) integration into everyday life has stirred up doubts and unsettling questions for many about humanity’s path forward. But in Anguilla, a tiny Caribbean island to the east of Puerto Rico, the AI boom has made the country a fortune.
 

The British territory collects a fee from every registration for internet addresses that end in “.ai,” which happens to be the domain name assigned to the island, like “.fr” for France and “.jp” for Japan. With companies wanting internet addresses that communicate they are at the forefront of the AI boom — like Elon Musk’s X.ai website for his artificial intelligence company — Anguilla has recently received a huge influx in requests for domain names. 
 

For each domain registration, Anguilla’s government gets anywhere from $140 to thousands of dollars from website names sold at auctions, according government data. Last year, the government made about $32 million from those fees. That amounted to more than 10 per cent of gross domestic product for the territory of almost 16,000 people and 35 square miles. “Some people call it a windfall,” Anguilla’s premier, Ellis Webster, said. “We just call it God smiling down on us.”
 

Anguilla’s control of .ai dates back to the early days of the internet, when nations and territories were assigned their slice of cyberspace.
 

Officials are uncertain how long the boon will last, but they predicted 2024 would bring in similar income as last year from domain names.

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