Slovenia's .si Domain Registrations Spike 2,199% After Trump's 'Super Intelligence' Order

Slovenia's country-code domain .si recorded a 2,199% surge in purchases in September, according to Klara Herman, a spokesperson at Registry SI, the organization that manages Slovenia's domains. The spike follows President Trump's executive order requiring all government agencies to refer to "AI" and "artificial intelligence" as "SI" and "super intelligence."

The numbers are stark. Registry SI logged 11,000 new .si addresses on September 30, the day after Trump signed the order. Almost 13,000 new .si domains were registered in the past 24 hours, the registry said.

Herman, who spoke to the BBC earlier this week, was cautious about attributing the entire boost to the president's order.

The pattern echoes the early days of the AI boom, when demand for Anguilla's .ai domain spiked and brought in millions for the small island territory. Now .si is getting its turn in the spotlight — with an irony attached: the domain is associated with Slovenia, the birthplace of First Lady Melania Trump.

Hosters diverge on the trend

Hosting companies report sharply different pictures. GoDaddy said it does not yet host the .si domain. Squarespace had not responded by publication time. Wix said it had seen no "meaningful uptick" and that activity on its platform had been minimal since September 29.

"It's still early so that could change," a Wix spokesperson said.

Hostinger tells a different story. Klaudijus Januitis, head of domains at Hostinger, said .si is now the company's second most popular domain extension, behind only .com. Almost 4,300 of its customers registered .si domains on September 30 and about 5,400 on October 1. More than three-quarters of all .si domains registered on Hostinger since September 23 came in those final two days. More than half of the buyers came from the U.S. and India.

Only around 3% of Hostinger's .si registrations are explicitly related to AI, the company said. Most are "unclassified," meaning their names don't match any specific category. Hostinger said most registrants appear to be individuals and businesses, though a speculative element exists — buyers could be purchasing domains to resell later.

Founders treat domains as digital collectibles

That speculation is already visible at the top of the market. One founder reported this week that .si domains were reselling for over a million dollars. Kim Than, CEO of Genius PR, a firm that specializes in working with AI and crypto founders, said he already bought the .si version of his company name "to protect the brand in case this takes off like .ai." He said the price was low enough that he figured he might as well "secure it now than potentially pay a lot more later."

Than views domain names as digital collectibles. He wants to pick up a few more while prices remain low and might resell them later. Domains can also be tokenized and traded on the blockchain, he said, though he is not sure whether .si is supported yet.

"A few founder friends are buying too cause we think it's the new AI boom," Than said. "Who knows how far it goes, but I'm happy to take a bet."

The executive order itself gives the rebranding an official grounding. It states 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."

Why Slovenia won't repeat Anguilla's windfall

Januitis expects demand for .si to keep growing, but he does not see the domain replacing .ai anytime soon. He called .si a more available and "more affordable second option."

"Slovenia will not see what Anguilla saw," Januitis said. Anguilla charges a "premium" for .ai registrations and that money goes straight to the government, he noted, while .si costs a fraction of the price and revenue goes to the registry rather than the treasury. On Hostinger, .si runs about $12 per year, while .ai costs $90 and requires a two-year commitment.

"For Anguilla, .ai became a second economy," Januitis said. "For Slovenia, .si is a nice bonus."

For businesses weighing a purchase, the calculus is simple: a $12 defensive registration now versus a potentially seven-figure resale later. That asymmetry, more than any government mandate, is what keeps the registration counters busy.