Tim Hargis alerted me to a LinkedIn post by Kushal Byatnal announcing that his company, Extend, had acquired the Extend.ai domain name for $50,000. The company had been using Extend.app, but it chose to spend mid-five figures to acquire the .ai domain name. You can see the rationale in the LinkedIn post:

Instead of covering this acquisition with a standalone article, I opted to post about it on X. I think this domain name sale was noteworthy, particularly because the Founder shared insight about the domain name and its importance to the company rather than simply sharing the acquisition price.

The aftermarket for .AI domain names has grown tremendously over the last several years. A look at Namebio shows the growing annual dollar volume of sales that were publicly reported in the aftermarket.

• 2018: $420.8k
• 2019: $1.1m
• 2020: $1.1m
• 2021: $1.2m
• 2022: $878.7k
• 2023: $5.6m
• 2024: $11.7m
• 2025 YTD: $3.2m (my guess is $20m+ for the year)

These aftermarket sales figures do not take into account the number of domain names that have been hand registered by buyers for the registration fee. The .AI registry requires a 2 year registration, and the cost is approaching $100/year. By all accounts, the number of .AI registrations is also growing at a considerable rate.

The .IO ccTLD extension could possibly be “phased out” if sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago is moved to Mauritius. My feeling is that it is highly unlikely the .IO extension will be removed given the number of businesses using .IO domain names. There is still a chance it could happen, and businesses would be forced to change domain names and possibly rebrand if the extension is terminated.

With that potential risk in mind, I was curious to know if industry colleagues are broaching this topic with clients who are interested in buying .IO domain names. I reached out to a small group of people whose companies advise on domain name deals and broker the sale of valuable domain names to ask the following: