Anguilla is a small island in the Caribbean, home to just 16,000 people and known for its white sand beaches, turquoise water, and a tourism-driven economy. For years, the island’s financial health rose and fell with the travel seasons. It was peaceful, beautiful, and economically predictable. Until something entirely unexpected changed the island’s fortunes - not a new resort, not a surge in visitors, but two letters: .ai.
Every country in the world is assigned a two-letter internet domain. The United States has .us, India has .in, Germany has .de. Anguilla, by sheer coincidence, drew .ai - a designation that meant little for decades.
Then came 2023. ChatGPT went mainstream. Midjourney and Stable Diffusion took over the internet. Perplexity emerged. Thousands of AI startups appeared almost overnight. Investors poured billions into the sector. And with every new AI idea came the same question:
“What domain should we buy?”
Suddenly, “.ai” wasn’t just a country code. It became a global badge of identity - the perfect digital home for any company working on artificial intelligence. From OpenAI to Runway to two-person teams building prototypes in their bedrooms, everyone wanted a domain ending in “.ai.”
And Anguilla owned all of it.
The impact was immediate and staggering. In 2021, before the AI wave fully hit, Anguilla earned around $7 million from domain registrations - a respectable sum for a small island. By 2024, that number had shot up to nearly $40 million, becoming one of the island’s largest revenue sources. That’s almost a quarter of Anguilla’s entire annual income, coming not from tourists on its beaches but from tech founders thousands of miles away.
Think about the scale of that shift: a tiny Caribbean island suddenly became a silent partner in the global AI revolution, not by building models or raising venture capital, but by simply owning the internet’s hottest two letters.
The beauty of this story lies in its serendipity. Anguilla didn’t plan for the AI boom. It didn’t try to position itself as a tech hub. It didn’t compete in global innovation races. All it did was maintain its assigned domain - something most countries never think twice about - and the world came running.
While Silicon Valley raced to build the future, Anguilla quietly sold them the name tags.
This unexpected windfall has given the island new opportunities: infrastructure investment, improved public services, and economic breathing room that would have taken decades to achieve through tourism alone. It’s a reminder that in a rapidly changing world, value can appear in the most surprising places.
As AI continues to expand, the demand for .ai domains shows no sign of slowing down. And Anguilla, with its perfect mix of timing and luck, will continue benefiting from a global technological movement it had no hand in creating.
The world is chasing AI.
But Anguilla?
It simply sold everyone the name tag.