The AI boom is making millions for an unlikely player in the sector: Anguilla
The integration of artificial intelligence into everyday life has raised doubts and troubling questions among many about humanity’s path forward. But in Anguilla, a small Caribbean island east of Puerto Rico, the AI boom has made the country a fortune.
The British territory collects a fee for each registration for internet addresses ending in ‘.ai’, which happens to be the domain name assigned to the island, such as ‘.fr’ for France and ‘.jp’ for Japan. Because companies want Internet addresses that communicate, they are at the forefront of the AI boom – such as Elon Musk’s X.ai website for his artificial intelligence company – Anguilla has recently received a huge influx of domain name requests.
For every domain registration, Anguilla’s government gets between $140 and thousands of dollars from website names sold at auctions, according to government data. Last year, the government of Anguilla earned approximately $32 million from these fees. That amounted to more than 10 percent of the gross domestic product for the territory of almost 16,000 people and 35 square kilometers.
“Some people call it a stroke of luck,” Anguilla Prime Minister Ellis Webster said. “We just call it God smiling down on us.”
Mr. Webster said the government used the money to provide free health care to citizens aged 70 and over, and pledged millions of dollars to complete construction of a school and vocational training center. The government has also released funds to improve the airport; doubled the budget for sports activities, events and facilities; and increased the budget for citizens seeking medical treatment abroad, he said.
The island, which relies heavily on tourism, was hit hard by pandemic travel restrictions and a devastating hurricane in 2017. Revenue from the .ai domain was the boost the country needed.
“We never thought it would have this potential,” Mr Webster said.
Anguilla’s control over .ai dates back to the early days of the internet, when nations and territories were allocated their slice of cyberspace. Anguilla received .ai, and the government, whose own site www.gov.ai. didn’t make much money until the domain names started making millions. Officials don’t know how long the boon will last, but they predicted 2024 would bring in similar domain name revenues as last year.
It’s not the first bonanza to make a big difference for a grateful domain owner. Tuvalu, a series of islands northwest of Australia, sold the rights to the “.tv” suffix to a Canadian entrepreneur for $50 million, and used the money to build electricity on the outer islands, create scholarships and fund the process to become a member of the United Nations.
In contrast, the South Pacific island of Niue gave an American businessman the rights to the “.nu” suffix in the 1990s in exchange for connecting to the Internet. The island later claimed to have been defrauded of cash obtained from selling the domain name to thousands of Scandinavians attracted by the suffix ‘nu’, meaning ‘now’ in Swedish, Danish and Dutch.
But Anguilla realized early enough that she couldn’t let this unexpected jackpot slip away.
“It’s just lucky for us,” said Mr. Webster.
Brian Hoerst reporting contributed.