President Trump's executive order directing government agencies to call artificial intelligence "super intelligence," or SI, has driven a sharp rise in registrations of Slovenia's .si domain. Registry SI, the organization that manages the country's domains, reported a 2,199 percent increase in .si purchases in September, spokesperson Klara Herman told the BBC earlier this week. Herman cautioned against attributing the spike solely to the order.
The registry logged 11,000 new .si addresses on September 30, the day after the order was signed, and nearly 13,000 registrations in the 24 hours before the figure was reported. The pattern resembles the early AI boom, when interest in Anguilla's .ai domain generated millions for the island territory. Slovenia is the home country of First Lady Melania Trump.
Responses from hosting providers have varied. GoDaddy said it does not yet offer .si, and Squarespace had not replied. Wix reported no meaningful increase, describing activity on its end as minimal since September 29, though a spokesperson said that could change because it is still early. Hostinger said .si now ranks as its second most popular extension behind .com.
Hostinger counted roughly 4,300 .si registrations on September 30 and about 5,400 on October 1, with more than three-quarters of all .si signups since September 23 occurring in those two days. More than half of buyers came from the United States and India. Only about 3 percent of the domains Hostinger registered are explicitly AI-related; most are unclassified, and the company said buyers appear to be mostly individuals and businesses, with some purchasing speculatively to resell.
Kim Than, chief executive of Genius PR, said he bought the .si version of his company's name to protect the brand in case the extension takes off like .ai, and that he did so because it was cheap. Than said he views domain names as digital collectibles, may buy more and resell later, and noted that domains can be tokenized and traded on the blockchain, though he is unsure whether .si is supported. He said founder friends are buying as well.
Klaudijus Januitis, head of domains at Hostinger, expects demand to keep growing but does not see .si displacing .ai soon, calling it a more available and affordable second option. He said Slovenia will not see what Anguilla saw, because Anguilla charges a premium that goes to its government, while .si costs a fraction of that and goes to the registry rather than the treasury. On Hostinger, .si runs about $12 a year, while .ai costs $90 with a two-year commitment.
More company and startup news from TechManNews.
