Slovenia's .si domain booms after the US starts calling AI 'super intelligence'

On September 29, President Trump signed an executive order replacing the term "Artificial Intelligence" with "Super Intelligence" in the executive branch, according to a White House fact sheet.

• Where it applies: official correspondence, public communications, policy documents and non-statutory documents in the executive branch.
• What it asks: departments and agencies should use "Super Intelligence" and "SI," and no longer use "Artificial Intelligence" or "AI."
• What's next: the President's science and technology adviser is directed to propose a federal definition of "Super Intelligence."

The order's reasoning, as quoted by TechCrunch, is that "the capabilities of today's frontier systems do much more than imitate or automate discrete aspects of human intelligence," and that they "increasingly represent not merely artificial intelligence but a new super intelligence."

The idea had been building for a week. Netcraft notes that Trump told the UN General Assembly on September 22 that the US would call AI "super intelligence."

By the numbers: the registry recorded 46,066 new .si domains in September, Domain Name Wire reports, and about 12,000 a day in the two days after the order.

Netcraft, which tracks the internet's websites, compared Registry SI's public stats from September 23 and October 1:

Netcraft adds that about 13 times as many .si domains were registered in September as in August.

For a sense of normal, Computerworld reports that .si registrations ran at about 2,726 a month, or 110 a day, around this time last year. In the 24 hours after the executive order alone, the registry recorded 9,780 new .si names, compared with 3,515 in the whole previous month. In the 25 hours after the UN speech, new .si registrations even overtook .ai, Netcraft reports.

A Registry SI spokesperson told the BBC there was a 2,199% increase in .si purchases in September, according to TechCrunch. She was cautious, though, about linking the boost only to the president.

The catch: so far, it looks a lot like speculation.

• Resellers: Netcraft traced the first wave mostly to Dynadot, a registrar with an aftermarket. Just over half the .si domains it tracked there were listed for resale.
• A new registrar: after the order, registrations sped up through OpusDNS, which launched in October 2025 and markets itself to resellers, hosting providers and agencies. Netcraft says it appears to have added .si on the afternoon of September 23, and early names there included AI-themed ones like "aicelerate.si" and "mcpapps.si." The number of .si registrars rose from 91 to 92 with its arrival.
• No startups yet: Domain Name Wire says most aftermarket sales trace back to domain investors. It cites Leanne Mac, who tracks ProductHunt launches, as finding no startups launching with .si in the past 30 days, while 50 of one day's launches used .ai.
• Not about AI: on Hostinger, only about 3% of new .si domains are explicitly AI-related, TechCrunch reports. Most don't fit any category.
• Who's buying: more than half of Hostinger's .si buyers came from the US and India.

There's even a side market. Netcraft found 87 .com domains pairing well-known brands with the word "superintelligence," registered shortly before the order and now listed for resale at $20,000 each.

The picture varies by company, TechCrunch found.

• Hostinger: .si is now its second most popular domain ending, after .com. About 4,300 of its customers registered .si on September 30 and about 5,400 on October 1.
• Wix: no "meaningful uptick" so far, though a spokesperson said "it's still early."
• GoDaddy: doesn't offer .si yet.

One buyer, Kim Than, CEO of Genius PR, told TechCrunch he bought the .si version of his company name "to protect the brand in case this takes off like .ai." He said a few founder friends are buying too.

Than told TechCrunch he sees domain names as digital collectibles and may pick up a few more while prices are low, possibly to resell later. "Who knows how far it goes, but I'm happy to take a bet," he said.

Whenever a new naming trend takes off, scammers usually aren't far behind. For now, Netcraft says it hasn't seen an increase in malicious content such as phishing tied to the super intelligence rename.

It did find the brand-name cluster of .com domains mentioned above. Those 87 names were registered in two batches at the registrar Spaceship early on September 29, before the order was signed, and Netcraft says it hasn't seen evidence that any have changed hands.

Netcraft says its systems will automatically start takedowns against new .si domains that share infrastructure with known attacks, and that it will keep watching for cybercrime around .si and super intelligence.

In real life If you get an email or ad pointing to a "superintelligence" site with a big brand's name in it, treat it like any unexpected link: check who really runs it before you log in or pay.

Why it matters: .ai turned into a major source of money for Anguilla, the small Caribbean territory it belongs to. TechCrunch notes that the AI boom brought the island millions.

Slovenia shouldn't expect the same, according to Klaudijus Januitis, head of domains at Hostinger. "Slovenia will not see what Anguilla saw," he told TechCrunch. "For Anguilla, .ai became a second economy. For Slovenia, .si is a nice bonus."

The difference is pricing and where the money goes:

Prices come from Domain Name Wire and TechCrunch. Januitis expects .si demand to keep growing, but sees it as a "more affordable second option," not a replacement for .ai.

There's also a twist of geography. Slovenia is the home country of First Lady Melania Trump, as TechCrunch and Neowin point out.

Netcraft says it hasn't yet spotted any US government .gov web addresses that mention super intelligence. Whether businesses follow the investors is the real test. As Domain Name Wire puts it, there's little evidence so far that actual companies are adopting .si.

For more on the policy side, see our story on Trump's lunch with AI leaders.

• If you own a brand: a .si version of your name is cheap, about €10 a year at the registry, if you want to protect it.
• If you're tempted to speculate: most current buying comes from investors, and there's no sign yet of companies paying big for .si names.
• If you see a .si website: it's still most likely Slovenian. Only a small share of new .si names are about AI.