SI Gold Rush: Can Slovenia's Domain Extension Become the Next Big AI Asset?

Many investors have recently begun to speculate that they've found another opportunity in .si, the country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Slovenia. What's exciting investors about .si, however, has very little to do with Slovenia.

The hype around the extension is instead due to speculation that the letters “SI” could come to be recognized as the abbreviation for “superintelligence,” a topic receiving more and more attention now that artificial intelligence is advancing towards more capable systems. It’s not the first time domain investors have placed hope in a country-code extension based on what its letters could stand for.

In past years, investors scooped up .co domains hoping that because the extension was seen as the natural alternative to .com, that those domains would stand for “company.” Though the .co extension originally belonged to Colombia, growth in the startup community gave the extension a worldwide identity and a healthy, if speculative, primary following.

A lot of the first domain investors who acquired some of the strongest .co domains went for a significant financial windfall in this trend, a journey where what had once been merely a ccTLD evolved into a globally acceptable branding option among startups and other businesses.

This scenario occurred with .ai, too. Once the domain of Anguilla, .ai is maybe the greatest domain investing success story recent times. It began as nothing more than a nation’s identifier before it grew into one of the most widely identifiable domain extensions within the tech sector-and there are currently a significant number of major AI organizations that consider their .ai domains their main brand identity. Many investors believe that .si will soon be to superintelligence what .ai is to artificial intelligence. Just as AI increased in the field of computing over the years, speculation surrounds the idea that those names with the potential to represent a rise to a level of superintelligence will gain increasing popularity among futurist tech organizations.

Many investors are taking a page out of both the .co and .ai playbook to take position on what could very well prove to be the next lucrative trend.

There has been significant interest in .si from many investors recently as a great number have been busy registering their favorite .si keywords, technologies, tech, and dictionary words. For many in the domain space who believe the era of superintelligence is within our future, they feel that a prime .si name is a great digital property to hold onto. But is the .si wave for real or is it mostly a bubble that is bound to collapse? A small number of these recently traded .si domains have already set records among country code second-level domains, such as Recursive.si ($20,000) and Acquire.si ($14,888), among others.

Earlier in February, the .si domain name AI.si sold for $34,000, and it also goes without saying that there are many strong .si names available to buy at bargain prices right now.

There has been significant buzz around one .si domain in particular in Recursive.si. The domain name was acquired by an AI company known as Recursive, an artificial intelligence firm committed to the creation of improved AI systems and innovative methods for machine learning research. In the eyes of many domain investors, this transaction offers tangible evidence of an organization within the domain space focused on superintelligence seeking to take position on the .si extensions.

In early May, it looked like registration of the .si ccTLD had been steadily picking up, clearly influenced by increased interest. At one time register.si was stating a record of approximately 181,400 registered domains, with around 2,715 newly registered during the last month and 725 in a 24 hour period. Now, with a number of over 186,000 domains, they’re showing over 6,300 new registrations with the last 30 days.

Despite the enthusiasm that surround the extension, it is usually convenient to be cautious. A crucial factor against .si’s success is that compared to .ai which directly correlates to what most people refer to as the overall field of artificial intelligence, superintelligence has only appeared in the conversations between researchers, organizations within the technology space, investors and technology enthusiast. We really don’t know if “SI” as superintelligence will become the universal shorthand that has already been achieved for AI. But, after all, that risk factor has always been present in domain investing. It is an essential part of the business.

Another one that must be taken into consideration: many of the transactions discussed are between domain investors and therefore, not an endorsement by actual end-users that believe .si offers anything that AI or other premium domains do not. What this means is that there have been numerous trades among domain investors, creating liquidity for those investors, not the validation by a business or startup seeking out the use of a . SI address to conduct its business online.

The success of a ccTLD like .si only truly takes off when businesses and researchers start using the domain to represent the primary digital identity of their organizations and endeavors.

Right now, the . SI extension has managed to achieve that one important milestone – getting people talking (as shown by the very active .SI thread on NamePros.com), getting sales going and capturing the imaginations of those searching for the next big thing on the horizon.