You don’t need a Silicon Valley startup to cash in on the AI gold rush—you just need the right two letters.

Anguilla, a quiet British territory in the Caribbean, struck digital gold thanks to its country code domain: .ai. 

Short for "Anguilla" on paper, but in the eyes of the tech world? It's shorthand for artificial intelligence.

As companies scramble to grab sleek domain names like chatbot.ai or genius.ai, every new registration sends money straight to Anguilla’s government. In 2024 alone, this brought in an estimated $39 million, nearly 25% of the island’s total revenue.

That cash is funding everything from airport improvements and digital classrooms to free healthcare for seniors. And all because Anguilla happened to share an abbreviation with one of the hottest tech trends on the planet.