SAN FRANCISCO – 05 June 2026 – The agentic AI boom has turned the IPv4 secondary market upside down. Brokers who spent years methodically tracking down dormant address blocks are now turning away business. Escrow.com is launching the IPv4 Power Broker Awards to put the best of them on record for the first time.

IPv4 addresses, the numerical identifiers that allow devices to communicate on the internet, have been in official exhaustion since 2011. Only 4.3 billion were ever created. The secondary market that emerged to redistribute them has grown into a multi-billion dollar trading ecosystem, and the brokers operating within it have until now received almost no public recognition for the scale of what they do.

That's partly because the market itself has operated in something close to obscurity. No public pricing data. No transaction indices. No league tables. Escrow.com's recently published IPv4 Investment Index, the first quarterly report based on verified secondary market transaction data, goes some way to changing that. The Power Broker Awards go a step further.

"These brokers are like the Indiana Joneses of the internet," said Matt Barrie, Chief Executive of Escrow.com. "They're trekking to far-flung corners of the world – former Soviet republics, defunct universities, retired engineers' estates – to find address blocks allocated decades ago that have been sitting unused ever since. It's a serious business, and serious businesses deserve serious recognition."

Escrow.com has facilitated well over half a billion dollars' worth of IPv4 transactions since 2013, across buyers in 82 countries and sellers in more than 90. Average deal sizes on the platform surged 66% in Q1 2026 compared to the same period last year, a shift that coincides with the acceleration of agentic AI. Every autonomous AI system operating on the internet requires its own IPv4 address. The waiting list for new allocations now runs 12 to 20 months, with a ceiling of 1,024 addresses per allocation. Against that backdrop, the brokers who locate and move existing address blocks are doing something that genuinely matters to how the internet functions.

The 2026 Winners

The 2026 winners, ranked by transaction volume through Escrow.com:

1. IPv4.Global by Hilco Global

IPv4.Global, a division of Hilco Streambank, has been brokering IPv4 addresses since 2011 and launched its online marketplace in 2014. The firm has monetised more than 65 million IPv4 addresses, generating over $1.3 billion for clients worldwide. It operates across all five Regional Internet Registries and handles everything from small online auction transactions to privately negotiated eight-figure deals.

2. Brander Group – Jake Brander

Jake Brander founded Brander Group in Scottsdale, Arizona, after working in IT sales as IPv4 addresses began to run out, investing $20,000 of his own savings to launch the company in 2016. The firm has since grown to serve more than 1,500 clients across 60 countries.

3. NetNova Limited

NetNova Limited placed third on the back of consistent deal execution across a broad range of block sizes and geographies, a firm that has built a significant footprint in IPv4 transfers without much fanfare.

4. Brenac EURL – Thomas Brenac

Suresnes, France-based Brenac EURL is the first IPv4 broker to have registered as a facilitator across all Regional Internet Registries, operating in ARIN, RIPE NCC, LACNIC, and APNIC, and holding membership with AFRINIC.

5. Connexly Holdings Inc – John Mills

Palo Alto-based Connexly is an ARIN Qualified Facilitator that has helped hundreds of companies acquire IPv4 allocations across ARIN, RIPE, and APNIC, with more than 25 years of experience in the networking space. John Mills serves as General Partner and General Counsel, a background that positions the firm well for the compliance-heavy transfer work that large IPv4 transactions require.

Each winner receives a custom Escrow.com IPv4 Power Broker plaque.

"Agentic AI kind of blew up the whole industry," said Jake Brander, President of Brander Group, whose firm has facilitated individual client engagements exceeding $120 million. "Overnight, we just had an explosion of customers coming in."