Anguilla
Anguilla exhibits niche exploitation: .ai domains now generate 23% of revenue ($39M in 2024) after ChatGPT made the country code synonymous with artificial intelligence.
Anguilla won a biological lottery when the internet assigned it the '.ai' country code. This British Overseas Territory of 15,000 people was allotted the domain in the 1990s—decades before artificial intelligence became a trillion-dollar industry. When ChatGPT launched in November 2022, .ai domain registrations exploded from 144,000 to over 600,000 by January 2025. Companies like perplexity.ai, meta.ai, and x.ai pay premium prices for the association. In 2024, domain sales generated $39 million—23% of government revenue.
This windfall adds to an already diversified small-island economy. Tourism accounts for 80% of GDP, with 60,000 high-spending visitors annually drawn to luxury resorts. The island was voted 'Best Caribbean Island' in 2025 by Travel & Leisure—a title it has claimed five times. Offshore financial services provide a third pillar: no capital gains, estate, profit, sales, or corporate taxes make Anguilla attractive for wealth structuring and captive insurance.
The strategy resembles cleaner fish economics: provide specialized services that larger entities value disproportionately to your size. The UK provides security guarantees (reflected in a six-notch credit rating uplift), while Anguilla provides regulatory niches, premium vacation experiences, and now—accidentally—the perfect domain extension for the AI industry.
Anguilla is using its .ai windfall strategically, establishing a National Wealth Fund and financing airport expansion to reduce hurricane vulnerability. In October 2024, domain hosting moved from local servers to a global network, ensuring AI companies' websites survive Caribbean storm season. The IMF projects domain revenue reaching $51 million by 2026—more than a quarter of total government income from two letters assigned three decades ago.