.ai Domain Sales Hit Record $37.7M as AI Boom Reshapes the Market
For the first time ever, a good .ai domain costs more than a good .com one.
SAN FRANCISCO, California – August 11, 2026 – The AI boom has a new price tag, and it's attached to a web address. Escrow.com's Q2 2026 Domain Investment Index, released today, shows .ai domain sales hit $37.7M this quarter – an all-time high for the extension, up 270% in three months.
No extension has ever grown that fast in a single quarter. The jump alone outpaced every other country-code extension combined.
The money is showing up in prices too. An exact-English-word .ai domain now averages $535k, edging past the $529k average for an equivalent .com for the first time on record. And that's not because .com is cheap – its own average jumped 31% this quarter to a record high, clearing a peak that had stood since 2021. The .ai extension simply climbed faster.
Nor is it all speculators trading amongst themselves. More than once this quarter, an AI company paid seven figures for the .com matching its own name. Add February's $70 million sale of AI.com, still the biggest domain deal ever recorded, and a pattern is hard to ignore. Crunchbase puts global AI startup funding at a record $510 billion for the first half of 2026. Some of that money is buying addresses.
Key Findings
- Total transaction volume: $160M (+25% QoQ)
- .ai transaction volume: $10.0M to $37.7M (+270%, the largest quarterly jump on record)
- Mean price, exact-word .ai domain: $148k to $535k (+260%), now above .com's $529k
- Mean price, exact-word .com domain: $402k to $529k (+31%), an all-time high, beating the 2021 cycle peak
- ccTLD share of total volume: 15% to 31%, doubling in a single quarter
- Domains without active content: 92% of the quarter's dollar volume, a new record high
- U.S. buyer volume: $105M to $140M (+33%)
"This quarter's .ai growth alone beat the combined gain of every other country-code extension. A year ago we didn't know if .ai would actually challenge .com or just fizzle out like the rest. Now we've got an answer. Buyers are paying more, on average, for a good .ai name than a good .com one," said Matt Barrie, Chief Executive of Escrow.com.
A Two-Speed Market
Look past the record averages and a stranger picture emerges. While the mean price of an exact-English-word domain climbed 64% to $289k, the median – the middle of the market – actually fell, from $14.4k to $8k. The top end is racing away from everything underneath it.
In other words, the records are being set by a handful of enormous deals, not a rising tide. A small group of buyers with very deep pockets is competing for a very short list of perfect names, while the typical transaction got cheaper. For sellers holding premium one-word domains, that's excellent news. For everyone else, the boom hasn't arrived yet.
The same split shows up between word domains and everything else. Domains containing English words did $116.6M in volume this quarter, up from $97.1M. Non-English-word domains managed $11.2M, and non-exact-word domains eased in average price from $27.7k to $20.7k. The market wants meaning, and it wants it in English.
"Every gold rush looks like this. A few names everyone wants go stratospheric and the rest of the market has to wait its turn. If you're holding a dictionary word or two or three letters, you're in the best market of your life. The buyers writing eight-figure cheques aren't browsing – they know exactly which name they want and there's only one of it," said Barrie.
The Gap Is Closing
.com still wins on raw volume – $86M this quarter against .ai's $37.7M. But the lead is thinning fast. The gap was $79M in Q1. Three months later it's $48M, a 39% drop. Some of that is .ai surging. Some is .com slipping, down 3% from $89M.
Zoom out and the shift is starker. Country-code extensions took 31% of all dollar volume this quarter, double their 15% share three months earlier – and nearly all of that swing came from .ai alone. Every other major ccTLD, from .io to .co to .it, gave back ground. Anguilla, the tiny Caribbean island that happens to own the .ai country code, is collecting the windfall.
The Old Guard Goes Quiet
Meanwhile, at the very top of the traditional market, something odd happened. Two-letter .com domains – historically among the most valuable names in existence, with a median of $825k just last quarter – didn't record a single sale. Nothing changed hands. Owners of the rarest .com real estate appear to be sitting tight, either unable to agree on price with buyers or waiting to see how high the market runs.
Raw Land Beats Real Estate
Buyers keep choosing empty lots over finished houses. Domains with nothing built on them took 92% of all dollar volume traded in Q2 2026 – a record, beating a high that had stood since early 2021. A blank domain now carries a higher median price than one with a working website, $4,750 against $4,023. Whatever buyers think these names will become, they're paying for the address, not the house.
Where the Money Comes From
American buyers drove the quarter, up from $105M to $140M. The surprise was Hong Kong, where buyer volume jumped from $1M to $9.9M – nearly ten times over – even as mainland China eased from $7.2M to $4.8M and Canada slipped from $8.2M to $5.1M.
Report Access
Read the full Escrow.com Domain Investment Index at: https://www.escrow.com/domains/investment-index-reports
About Escrow.com
Winner of the BBB Torch Award for Ethics for Silicon Valley, San Francisco and the Bay Area, Escrow.com is the world's largest online escrow provider. Founded in 1999 by Fidelity National Financial, today over US$8 billion in transactions have been secured from over 3 million customers. Escrow.com is the world's number one platform for domain name transactions – it also facilitates large-value transactions for vehicles, property, electronics, jewellery, general merchandise and other categories of products, using the most secure payment method from a counterparty risk perspective – safeguarding both buyer and seller. All funds transacted using escrow are kept in trust.
The company is a division of Freelancer Limited (ASX: FLN, OTCQX: FRLCY). Escrow.com's headquarters is in San Francisco, California, in the United States.
For more information, contact:
| Brent O'Halloran | Director of Communications |
| bohalloran@escrow.com | |
| Tel | +1 650 442 3334 |