The string tacked onto the end of a web address has never been a trivial detail, and the newest round of applications to create them makes that clearer than ever: the next internet land rush is being fought over the vocabulary of artificial intelligence.
For the first time in years, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers — ICANN, the body that coordinates the internet's naming system — is accepting applications for new top-level domains. These are the suffixes that sit to the right of the final dot in a URL, the familiar territory of .com, .org and .pizza. This cycle has drawn 1,615 applications from 481 separate applicants, and the way those requests are distributed reads like a heat map of where the technology industry believes value is heading.
The AI suffixes at the center of the scramble
No theme dominates the batch more than artificial intelligence. Ten different companies, including both Meta and OpenAI, submitted applications for .agent. Seven, OpenAI among them, applied for .agi, the shorthand for artificial general intelligence. Six, again with OpenAI in the mix, filed for .asi, an apparent attempt to claim the "super intelligence" framing that President Trump has pushed as a replacement for the phrase "artificial intelligence." Four applicants are chasing .intelligence, while two companies want .superintelligence — a string long enough that anyone typing it might lose count of the syllables. Meta is one of those two.
The breadth of corporate interest becomes clearer when you look at how many strings the largest players are pursuing at once:
- OpenAI applied for 15 top-level domains in total.
- Meta applied for 21.
- Meta's requests include .facebook, .instagram, .messenger, .meta, .frommeta and .threads.
- OpenAI's include .chatgpt, .codex, .openai and .gpt alongside its AI-themed bids.
- Anthropic is seeking .anthropic and .claude.
- Bluesky applied for .bsky, with the apparent intention of weaving the string into its usernames.
Strings that attract multiple bidders cannot simply be handed to everyone who asks. Contested names are a built-in feature of any application round this crowded, and who ultimately controls a suffix like .agent or .agi will matter well beyond the companies involved — it shapes where products, documentation and identity pages can live for years.
Two kinds of domains, two kinds of ambition
The applications broadly divide into two categories. The first is generic: strings that plenty of people or organizations might plausibly register and use. Hundreds of these appear in the current batch, ranging from .geek and .haha to .anime and .jackpot, plus one memorable outlier in .itiswhatitis. These are the domains that could eventually sit behind personal sites, small businesses, side projects and, inevitably, a certain amount of speculative registration.
The second category is purely branded — a company applying for its own TLD so it can control an entire namespace outright. There are 345 brand applications in this batch, spanning names from .applebees and .bankofamerica to .zillow and .zoom. For a large consumer brand, owning the string means campaign pages, support portals and product sites can all live under one unmistakably corporate address, with no ambiguity about who is behind them.
Why owning a namespace is suddenly a priority
A branded top-level domain is part marketing surface and part defensive perimeter. When a company controls both sides of the final dot, it gains a clean way to present official destinations, and a naming pattern that is hard for impostors to imitate convincingly. That logic explains why so many of the requests in this round come from businesses whose names are already well known to consumers.
OpenAI and Meta cast unusually wide nets
The two companies with the heaviest AI ambitions also filed the largest portfolios. Meta's 21 applications reach across its social products — Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Threads — as well as corporate markers like .meta and .frommeta. OpenAI's 15 mix consumer-facing names such as .chatgpt with developer-oriented options like .codex and .openai, layered on top of its bids for .agent, .agi, .asi and .gpt.
Anthropic took a narrower, more surgical approach, pursuing .anthropic and .claude. Bluesky's single application for .bsky points to a different strategy altogether: rather than using the domain mainly for marketing pages, the company appears to envision it as part of how users identify themselves on the network.
Reading the tea leaves of a 1,615-string batch
Domain applications have always functioned as a kind of forecast. A decade ago, a wave of speculative suffixes revealed which consumer categories investors expected to grow; this round suggests that the industry's collective bet has consolidated around machine intelligence. The fact that six applicants, OpenAI included, reached for .asi — a string tied to a specific political framing of the technology — shows how quickly naming decisions now track the language of policy debates.
The 345 brand applications tell a complementary story. Companies that once settled for a .com and a handful of defensive registrations are now willing to go through a lengthy, expensive process to own a piece of the root itself. That shift reflects how much of a company's identity now lives in the address bar, in app links, in documentation and in usernames rather than in a single homepage.
What comes next
The announcement covers the applications submitted so far, not the final map of the internet. Sorting out overlapping requests, weighing objections and determining which strings actually enter circulation is a separate and slower exercise, and the practical result will be a somewhat different list than the one published today.
Still, the shape of the coming era is already visible. Users may rarely type a full domain anymore, but suffixes function as signals of ownership, credibility and tribal affiliation. If even a fraction of these 1,615 requests are approved, the internet's outermost layer will carry more AI branding than ever before — and a handful of companies will hold strings that describe the technology they are building, rather than merely the products they sell.
This article is based on reporting by The Verge. Read the original article.
Originally published on theverge.com
