If you want to learn about passive income, talk to Anguilla.
It was purely luck of the draw. The tiny island nation of Anguilla, just half the size of Washington DC, inadvertently struck gold when it was designated the country-specific website domain name “.ai” in the 1990s. It didn’t mean much then, but with ChatGPT leading the development of AI now, the domain “.ai” has become popular among tech startups looking to give their companies some extra oomph. The Caribbean country welcomes domain registrars to pay it $140 per 2-year .ai domain registration. And registrations have doubled in the past year to 300,000, since ChatGPT was released to the public.
Domain revenue is expected to reach $25-30 million this year. That’ll be over 25% of Anguilla’s total annual revenue.
It’s not the only country finding money in the URL bar. The South Pacific island of Tuvalu—with, you guessed it, a “.tv” domain—earns an estimated $10 million a year from its contract with GoDaddy, thanks to the streaming boom.
[Bs Showprep, Morning Brew]
