From what I’ve read on Namepros and elsewhere, I believe Igor Gabrielan must hold one of the largest portfolios of good .AI domain names. I think his portfolio of domain names can be found at ai-names.com, which links to an aged thread on the PR.ai forum. I don’t know if that list is current, but it is quite lengthy and contains some strong domain names like Apps.ai, Assistants.ai, Competition.ai, Library.ai….etc.
I don’t think I’ve ever communicated with Igor, and I don’t know much about him. He shared a story about what it was like to register .AI domain names back in 2011, and I thought it was pretty interesting.
When I wanted to start registering .ai domains in early 2011, there was a requirement to contact Anguilla by fax for verification. By that time, fax machines had become obsolete, so I took the fax machine out of the shed and took it in for repair. But when I was carrying a fax…
— Igor Gabrielan (@IgorGabrielan) March 5, 2024
The police even wanted to use physical torture to break me up. But then one of the police recognized me, since I was selling on the street not far from their station, and they let me go. But I complained to my own security police, saying that perhaps these policemen were involved…
— Igor Gabrielan (@IgorGabrielan) March 5, 2024
Shortly before this, a corpse was discovered under a bridge nearby, or even two corpses. In those days, our police sometimes detained people, took their money, killed them, and threw out their corpses. I complained that the corpses were probably the work of the police officers…
— Igor Gabrielan (@IgorGabrielan) March 5, 2024
Igor’s .AI registration story is a bit dark, but everyone’s domain investing origin story is unique.
Wow!
Igor overcame many challenges and he had the prescience to register a portfolio of amazing .ai domains.
Either Igor or Tom Tayang of China have the most valuable domain portfolios in the world.
My portfolio was probably in the top 10 but I sold 80% of my .ai domains and made a very high ROI, with many 5 figure sales, but no 6 figure sales.
The early buyers (as in 2016, 2017) of my .ai domains were AI startups with significant funding and revenues.
In 2023, I had several mid-5 figure domains, and these buyers were mainly marketing companies and 2 VC companies based in San Francisco.
Tom has had some of the highest .ai domain sales. He keeps an extremely low profile, but I’d imagine his .ai sales so far are over 5 million usd, based on the buyers (biggest tech companies)
most valuable .ai domain portfolios
I should mention Andy Booth may not have the biggest .ai portfolio, but he certainly has some of the most valuable:
Home.ai
Sound.ai
Art.ai
and many more
The AI ART market is projected to reach 2 trillion usd by 2030. And the top art galley in the world Larry Gagosian is now selling AI art. Gagosian sells works by Warhol, Basquiat, Lucian Freud, De kooning, for about 100 million per work with billions in annual revenues.
Sothebys also has an AI art division.
Andy will do well with Art.ai
Hats off to those folks who’ve made money on them, but for the long term, make no mistake; .ai is .mobi in sheep’s clothing. It may take awhile for the costume to come off, but come off it will.
Would be interesting to know who / how many initial .ai buyers have upgraded to the world-golden .com.
Steve,
You can’t compare .AI to .Mobi”.
We should do a poll on the valuation of all the companies using .ai?
My guess would be somewhere north of 2 Trillion USD, not including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta that have purchased .AI domains for product offerings not as redirects or subsidiaries
I doubt companies using .mobi ever surpassed 30 million in market cap
If there’s any idiot here, it’s me. I knew how big AI was going to be in 2015 while working as CTO of an AI company in Montreal, ground zero for all the advances in AI. I knew how big AI was going to be and I registered ONLY about 100 AI domains in 2015-2016 — terrible biz decision — i should have regged 1000
reminds me of Toni Stephenson who along with her husband accumulated one of the most valuable .com portfolios all time in the 1990s…she told me she regretted she and her husband neglected to register gambling domains at the time as they were all avail to get for ref fee..domains like vegas.com, sportsbet.com, lasvegas.com, slots,com, sportsbook.com, poker.com — now this trove is worth 1000 x time any more .AI domains I could have scooped up in 2015…but lots of monies left on the table
Everyone says the extension the invested in “can’t be compared to .Mobi”.
Why not? .Mobi did very well for a couple of years.
Was there much usage of .Mobi that I don’t recall? I have been seeing many startups featured in TechCrunch that use .AI names. My perception is there is more usage of .AI than .Mobi.
By the way, Chinese financial services company with over 385 million in funding recently rebranded from ICEKREDIT.COM to ICEKREDIT.AI
simple reason: companies want to announce “we are AI”
by 2030, maybe all companies on the web will be .AI so there won’t be a need to have AI in the moniker
But that’s 6 years from now. Who even knows if the world as we know will exist in 2030 with saber rattling and nuke threats coming from the Kremlin, tensions in the South China Seas, and war in the Middle East …the world is on fire ..just ask the tech titans who have built billion dollar bunkers in New Zealand, Hawaii, South America … Sam Altman has secured his bunker with a media room, indoor swimming pool, wine cellars, and enough food to last 10 years …LOL
Steve can you share some of that cool aid your drinking. I need. Good buzz from reality as well
Reminds me of this story https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/21/long-island-iced-tea-micro-cap-adds-blockchain-to-name-and-stock-soars.html