Anguilla's AI Fortune
💰 How the island makes $30 million of passive income per year from AI
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Updates
Before we get into today’s issue, some updates for you:
Where I’ve been: I haven’t sent this newsletter in three weeks because I caught COVID on one week and another virus the week after. It was rough but I’m slowly back to my regular rhythm.
AI Tools Database: I’ve added two new tools that I started using regularly. First, Relume is perfect if you build websites in Webflow because it significantly speeds up the process from design to implementation. Second, I’m slowly starting to use Perplexity more for research instead of Google and I’ve been loving it. 👉 View the entire AI Tools Database
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How Anguilla makes $30 million per year from AI
While AI companies and startups raise and spend billions in an attempt to build the next killer AI app, the small Caribbean island of Anguilla has been quietly reaping the benefits.
During the Internet boom of the 1990s, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) wanted to organize the internet by country/territory and allow each of them to have their unique domain.
Country-specific domains, officially known as country code top-level domains (ccTLD), were assigned to each country and territory.
That’s why you see domains like .ca (Canada), .br (Brazil), .jp (Japan), and so on.
Meanwhile, Anguilla was assigned the .ai domain.
Ironically, the AI industry was in one of its “winters” in the late 1980s to the early 1990s. Research funding was drying up, and overall interest was falling off because AI wasn’t delivering on its promise and potential.
But 30 years later, the AI industry is booming and Anguilla is raking in cash.
In the past year alone, .ai domain registrations more than doubled from 156,000 to 373,000 (WHOIS).
For each registered domain, Anguilla gets at least $120 every two years while the domain remains active.
Domain revenue growth:
2018: $2.9 million
2022: $8.3 million
2023: $32 million
That’s some amazing passive income. To put that into perspective, that’s 10% of Anguilla’s GDP.
The .ai domain has been transformational to Anguilla’s population of 19,000 people.
According to a report, Anguilla has been using these funds to provide free healthcare for citizens aged 70 and older, build schools and training centres, improve its airport, invest in other activities and events, and increase the budget for people who need medical treatment overseas.
Another fun fact: The Pacific island of Tuvalu, which was assigned the .tv domain, makes $10 million per year by leasing its domain to GoDaddy. Around 447,000 .tv domains are currently registered (WHOIS).
🎥 Videos of the Week
🤖 Why the Figure 01 robot stutters shouldn’t worry you (TikTok | Instagram)
🗣️ Can you tell the difference between my real and AI-cloned voices? (TikTok | Instagram)
💡 NVIDIA’s Project Gr00t (TikTok | Instagram)
👾 The exponential progress of computing in the last 10 years (TikTok | Instagram)
🧠 3 ways I use AI in my daily life (TikTok | Instagram)
🔮 The future is too exciting to keep to yourself
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⏮️ What you may have missed
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