10,000 .si Names a Day: CNET Puts Numbers on the Rush, and What Buyers Should Do Next

CNET says everyone's shopping for .si

The .si rush isn't just a story for domain forums any more. On 5 October CNET reported that the extension has become "a hot item around the world" less than two weeks after President Trump said the US was renaming artificial intelligence to super intelligence. It's the first time I've seen registry and registrar figures side by side, so here they are.

• Slovenia has registered more than 10,000 .si names every day since Wednesday, according to CNET.
• Register.si, the national registry, says there were more than 46,000 registrations in September, a more than 15-fold increase from 3,515 in August.
• Hostinger told TechCrunch that .si is now its second-most-popular extension after .com, and that more than half of its buyers are in the US and India.

Slovenia lets anyone register a .si name, and you don't have to live in the country. That's why the buyer pool can be global from day one.

Who's buying, and what they're betting on

CNET describes two groups. Companies are scooping up .si names for future branding. Other people are grabbing them in the hope of reselling them to companies that want them.

The loudest signal for the first group came from Elon Musk. On 4 October he posted on X, "No more AI. SI. It's better.", as Uniladtech reported. He also said he'd rename SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI. But CNET notes that, as of its writing, the company was still listed as SpaceXAI on social media and on its website. A promise to rebrand isn't a rebrand, and it's worth remembering that gap when you see .si names priced as if every company is about to switch.

The numbers, put in proportion

Register.si is run by the Academic and Research Network of Slovenia and charges registrars only about $11 per domain. CNET says that adds up to more than $300,000 in September. Compare that with Anguilla, which made more than $85 million last year from over 1 million .ai registrations.

So yes, the growth in .si is real: more than 46,000 in a month against 3,515 the month before. But it's still a small extension next to .ai, and a small extension means a small resale market. If thousands of the new registrations were bought to flip, they'll be competing for a limited number of end users. I'd expect most of them never to sell.

The risk nobody's pricing in: the word "super"

Memeburn raised a point that matters to anyone naming a product. The September 29 executive order tells agencies to say "super intelligence", but it defines the term using the existing statutory definition of AI. Memeburn says that definition is broad enough to cover a spam filter.

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson has argued that the FTC should police AI through existing consumer protection law, and he's now a vice chair of the new Super Intelligence Force. Memeburn points out that deception law turns on what a reasonable consumer takes a claim to mean. If more companies market chatbots as "super intelligence", someone will have to decide whether the word is harmless puffery or a capability claim a product can't back up. Memeburn calls this an open question, not a legal conclusion, and I'm not a lawyer either.

Here's the practical bit. The .si ending is just Slovenia's country code. A plain name on .si that says what you do isn't the same as a product name that promises super intelligence. The date to circle is November 28, when science adviser Michael Kratsios's 60 days to propose legislative language for a federal definition run out. If the definition narrows to frontier capabilities, Memeburn says SI becomes a regulatory category.

Names in my inventory that fit this moment

These are descriptive category names, not capability claims. Each one describes something people already search for.

• aiprompts.si, $5,500: 201,000 searches a month worldwide. The .ai is listed at $44,500 and the .com has been held since 2018.
• webbrowser.si, $5,000: 165,000 searches a month worldwide. The .ai asks $48,900 and the .com has been held since 2002.
• aimarket.si, $4,500: 12,100 searches a month. The .com is listed at $594,888 and the .ai at $47,995.
• evcharging.si, $4,500: 368,000 searches a month worldwide. The .ai is listed at $17,599 and the .com is reserved for strategic use. It's also a natural local domain for a Slovenian charging operator.
• liedetector.si, $3,000: 60,500 searches a month. The .ai is listed at $65,000 and the .com has been held since 1998.

I can't point you to past sales of comparable .si names, so judge these against what the .com and .ai twins cost, not against hype.

Should you buy a .si name because of this?

Not because of the headlines alone. Most .si names are speculation, the aftermarket is small, and one busy month at the registry doesn't change that. If you'd only buy a name because Musk posted about SI, don't.

Use this three-question test:

1. Are the .com and .ai taken or expensive? If the .com is available at a fair price, buy the .com. For most businesses it's still the better buy.
2. Is it a generic name, not a brand? Stick to plain words. Don't register a copy of one company's brand, SpaceXSI included; that's not an investment I'd touch.
3. Do people search for it? Real monthly search volume means there's demand behind the words, whatever extension they sit on.

If all three answers are yes, a .si can be a sensible, cheaper home for a generic name. If any answer is no, I'd keep your money. You can see what I've got at aidomains.si, but I'd rather you buy the right name than one of mine.

Names from this store that pass the test

Questions

Sources

1. CNET, 2026-10-05
2. Memeburn, 2026-10-05
3. Uniladtech, 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.