Choosing The Right Domain For Your AI Startup

AI is no longer sci-fi. While the numbers involved in the AI industry might seem like the stuff of fiction — in 2024 big tech companies, like Alphabet, Meta and Amazon invested over $200 billion in AI, and the market is predicted to surpass $400 billion by 2027 — artificial intelligence arrived with a bang with ChatGPT’s 2022 launch and it hasn’t slowed down.

And it’s looking to be worth the investment. According to the Financial Times, AI companies are now generating revenue faster than comparable non-AI tech companies. The growth of startups based on AI technology has created a competitive market and, with many of these brands offering a SaaS-style provision, domain names have become an essential asset for AI startups looking to stand out. Consequently, there’s been a surge of interest in .ai domain names. This country-code top-level domain, from the unassuming Caribbean territory of Anguilla, is now a valuable commodity, leading to the obvious question – is a .ai TLD the best choice for AI-forward startups?

The Domain Landscape For AI Startups

.ai is now the second most popular domain extension for newly funded startups, with 7.6% choosing this domain. As ever, .com remains the most popular TLD with over two-thirds of new startups opting for it, while 4.4% use .io.

With these stats in mind, it’s unsurprising that .com dominates with the most valuable AI companies: OpenAI.com, DataBricks.com and UiPath.com being some examples. On the other hand, x.ai, Character.ai, Perplexity.ai and Claude.ai provide high-profile examples of companies with .ai domains.

It’s notable that the .com domains chosen by the above AI success stories are largely compound names or non-English words, while many of the companies finding success with a .ai domain are using industry or service-relevant, single English-language words.

Clearly, .ai domains offer many advantages for new startups, including more availability and (in many cases) lower upfront costs than .com domains. They also offer a laser-focused brand identity, which can be a big plus if you’re truly launching an AI brand but may cause issues down the line if your startup branches out or your use of AI is more background integration than flagship product.

Our Research On How .AI And .Com Shape Up

To help AI startups make the right domain and branding decisions, we recently ran a survey to determine the public’s perception of credible domain names. To ensure our respondents engaged with AI companies regularly, we asked how often they use AI-powered services: all respondents who entered our survey answered either “frequently” or “occasionally”. Here’s what we found:

1. .Com Is Still The Strongest Option, But .AI Offers A Branding Shortcut

.com remains king among domain extensions, but .ai is growing in popularity and clearly differentiates your brand as AI-focused. Despite this, a majority of survey respondents still choose .com as the most favored extension for an AI brand. Among our respondents as a whole, <Name>AI.com was seen as slightly stronger than <Name>.ai – for example, authorizedAI.com vs authorized.ai – but this isn’t true among all demographics. For AI brands, .ai ranks ahead of .com among 18 – 24s, and they are as likely to favor authorized.ai vs authorizedAI.com. Continuing to prove itself, .ai now equals the well-established .net in credibility among many demographics, and it’s the clear choice among tech-specific domains, ranking higher than .io and .tech. As always, brands should understand their audience when choosing a domain, and if they skew younger or more tech-savvy, then a .ai domain may be a very strong choice.

2. Add-On Words Harm Credibility

When choosing a domain name, AI startups must balance competing criteria. Despite .com remaining the strongest TLD choice overall, the strongest name and domain combination won’t always be available (or affordable) as a .com. We found that an AI company’s credibility was harmed for 96% of customers when an add-on word (other than AI) was used in the domain name. For example, getauthorized.com or authorizedapp.com for a startup called “Authorized”.

3. Single English Words Or Short Pronounceable Names Offer Credibility

Whether you’re searching for a .com or .ai domain, ensure that what comes before the dot is short, memorable, and ideally a single English word. There is consensus among investors that a single English language word boosts your chances of receiving funding, which makes a .ai domain all the more appealing, as there’s more single-word availability under this extension. For brands seeking a .com extension, our research into AI names and domains uncovered that customers are favorable towards short, easy-to-pronounce words, exemplified by fast-growing AI startups such as Suno and Glean.

Choosing The Right Domain For Your Goals

AI is an exceptionally competitive marketplace in 2024, and, as in any competitive marketplace, it can be hard for AI companies to differentiate themselves from competitors.

Unless you’re marketing to a very tech-savvy demographic, explaining why your machine-learning algorithms are superior to a competitor’s is difficult! Indeed, for many AI startups, their models may be identical to competitors, particularly if they’re white-labeling third-party AI tech. In these highly commoditized markets, the strength of your name, domain name, and brand are particularly important and some of the core early decisions you have to make as a founder.

Currently, .ai domains remain easier to pair with single-word names than .coms. Single-English-word .coms can command high seven-figure sums, while the biggest publicly reported .ai sale to date was you.ai at $700,000. When searching for the best possible name, a .ai domain gives you more options if you want to invest in a strong exact match domain and have capital left over to get your business off the ground. However, if you decide to go for the almost universally trusted .com for a strongly AI-focused brand but find a single-word .com out of reach, you might consider the OpenAI.com model of using <word>AI.com as a practical and credible alternative. Data from our marketplace shows these domains have a lower average selling price than single English word .ai domains and, perhaps because of OpenAI’s ubiquity, they’re trusted by many consumers.

As ever, you should carefully consider the future of not only your business but the business landscape in general when choosing a domain. What seems like an AI focus now may well be standard integration in future – with AI proliferating across industries it could soon be an expected feature rather than a USP, making AI in your name or a .ai domain redundant unless you’re developing unique AI technologies.

Finally, when making this core branding choice it’s important to remember that many domains are available through payment plans, potentially making a one-word .com domain more attainable than it initially seems. Balance budget, brand, and ambition, and choose a domain that fits all three.