46k .si domains registered in September, momentum growing after Trump’s executive order
A political statement about artificial intelligence has spilled into the domain aftermarket. Slovenia's .si, a country-code extension, is the vehicle; speculation is the engine; end-user adoption is the open question.
The trigger is a terminology shift. A UN speech and an executive order moved the U.S. government's preferred phrase for artificial intelligence to "super intelligence." The abbreviation SI is also Slovenia's country-code top-level domain. Domain investors connected the two before any business did.
The result is a concentrated buying spree. The registry reports 46,066 new .si registrations in September, with the last two days of the month running at roughly 12,000 per day. The aftermarket shows the same names moving between investors, relisted at higher prices. That is a speculative market, not an end-user market.
The economics of the extension matter here. At €10 per year, .si is inexpensive to hold. Compare that with .ai, Anguilla's ccTLD, which carries a $160 wholesale price for a two-year minimum. Low carrying costs let speculators sit on inventory longer, but they also keep the barrier to entry low for more supply.
The adoption signal is thin. A tracker of ProductHunt launch domains shows no startup choosing .si in the past 30 days, against 50 choosing .ai. Startup launch choices are an early indicator of where businesses think a TLD has user-facing meaning. On that measure, .si has not arrived.
What is unknown is whether the terminology sticks and whether businesses follow it. The registrations are a bet on a naming trend, not evidence of one. For holders, the risk is straightforward: if the narrative cools, the buyers are other speculators, and that liquidity can disappear faster than the registrations appeared.
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