Only 3% of New .si Names Are About AI: The Hedging Behind the Rush

The new number: about 3% of .si names are about AI

Hostinger has now put a figure on something I've suspected since the rush started. Of the .si domains it has classified, only about 3% have names clearly related to AI, DigitalToday reported on 7 October. The rest are something else.

That's despite .si becoming Hostinger's second best-selling domain after .com. It sold about 4,300 .si domains on 30 September, the day after Trump's executive order, and about 5,400 on 1 October. More than half of the buyers were users in the US and India.

So the volume is real. But most of the names people are buying aren't SI products or SI startups. An analysis cited by DigitalToday said many may have been registered for preemption or resale aimed at future price increases.

Hedging, not building

Other data points the same way. Security firm Netcraft found more than 44,000 cases where someone, often the same company, now holds both the .ai and .si versions of an identical name, according to OfficeChai. That's defensive buying: a company protecting a name in case SI catches on.

Netcraft also found that more than half of the .si names people bought early through the registrar Dynadot went up for resale on its aftermarket, The Next Web reported. Forbes India said the surge appears to be "driven less by active AI businesses than by speculation".

The price makes it easy. A .si costs about $12 a year on Hostinger, against $90 for a .ai, which needs a two-year commitment. At that price, it's cheap to register a pile of names and wait.

What this means for the resale market

Here's the part buyers should think about. If half of the early names are already listed for resale, the supply of .si names for sale is growing faster than the number of people building on them. That isn't a recipe for rising prices across the board.

OfficeChai made the renewal point plainly: "Speculative registrations tend to fall away when the hype fades, and a domain bought as a flip has to find a buyer or get dropped." Every name bought this autumn has a renewal date, and I'd expect a lot of the flips to lapse when it arrives.

Hostinger itself forecast that .si is unlikely to replace .ai in the short term. Its head of domains, Klaudijus Januitis, told TechCrunch: "For Anguilla, .ai became a second economy. For Slovenia, .si is a nice bonus."

A warning about brand names

Netcraft also found 87 .com domains that pair well-known brands with the word "superintelligence". Their owners registered them before the order and offer them for resale at $20,000 each. The firm said it hadn't yet seen a rise in phishing linked to the rename.

I won't sell names like that, and I don't think you should buy them. A domain built on someone else's brand is a risk, not an asset. The only .si names I'd consider paying for are plain generic words that no single company owns.

Why the 3% is the part worth studying

If about 97% of new .si names aren't clearly about AI, then names that are, in plain words people already search for, are a small group. That doesn't make them valuable on its own. It does change the question. I'm no longer asking whether .si is booming. I'm asking whether anyone would actually build a real business on a given name.

A few examples from my own inventory, with the data behind each:

• aiprompts.si ($5,500): over 200,000 searches a month worldwide for the exact phrase. The .ai twin is listed at $44,500 and the .com has been held since 2018.
• aivideoeditor.si ($5,000): "AI video editor" is searched 201,000 times a month worldwide. Its .com twin asks $149,995.
• aimarket.si ($4,500): the .com is listed at $594,888 and the .ai at $47,995, with 12,100 searches a month.
• webbrowser.si ($5,000): 165,000 searches a month worldwide. The .ai is listed at $48,900 and the .com has been held since 2002.

Those numbers describe demand for the words, not for .si. Search volume tells you people want the thing. It doesn't promise that a .si will rank, resell or rise in price.

Should you buy a .si name because of this?

Honestly, the 3% figure is a reason for caution, not excitement. Most .si names are speculation, and the aftermarket for them is small. Trump's order applies only to the federal government, and a YouGov poll cited by Axios found 53% of respondents preferred "artificial intelligence" while only 9% preferred "super intelligence". If SI doesn't catch on beyond Washington, many of these names won't be worth their renewal fee.

If the .com of your words is available or affordable, buy the .com. It's still the better buy for most businesses. A .si only makes sense when the .com and .ai are taken or expensive and you need a short, clear name now. Run this three-question test first:

1. Is the .com and .ai taken? If either is free or cheap, you'll do better buying that instead.
2. Is it a generic name and not a brand? Plain words only. Never a copy of one company's name.
3. Do people search for it? If nobody types the phrase, the extension won't save it.

If a name passes all three, a .si can be a sensible, low-cost place to build. If it doesn't, skip it. You can see the names I hold at aidomains.si.

Names from this store that pass the test

Questions

Sources

1. DigitalToday, 2026-10-07
2. OfficeChai, 2026-10-06
3. The Next Web, 2026-10-05
4. Forbes India, 2026-10-05

This post was researched and drafted with AI help from the sources above, then checked by me before publishing. Facts are as reported on the dates shown.