Administrator discloses Identity Digital rev share, other details — Former .ai

Former .ai administrator shares that Identity Digital is keeping 10% of revenues from the domain.

A couple of people have sent me videos this stretch of former .ai domain administrator Vincent Cate talking regarding the domain names.

One of the videos, from March of 2024, discusses the finances and trajectory of the domain name.

In the video, Cate stated the domain would generate regarding $3.9 million for the government that month. (In another video filmed a month later, Cate stated the March total was $3.8 million.)

He pointed out that the best was yet to come. .Ai took off when ChatGPT came out in November 2022. Since .ai domains have a two-year registration period, he predicted the government would receive closer to $6 million monthly when renewals hit in November 2024.

It seemed that a key goal of his presentation was to retain control of the domain as the government of Anguilla put it out to bid. He urged the country to “never sell the golden goose.” He mentioned that other countries signed fixed price deals with big firms that took advantage of those countries.

Of course, Anguilla did end up bringing in a big firm to manage the domain. Identity Digital took over operations in January.

The prior week, Cate filmed a video regarding the history of the .ai domain. He stated the video was in response to personal attacks heading into this stretch’s elections in Anguilla.

Cate stated Jon Postel gave the country code domain to him personally and then he gave it to the government. He stated that he gave 75% to the government when he ran the domain. For a while, he got behind on payments with the country but entered into a payment plan and eventually paid a higher percentage.

He disclosed that Identity Digital is giving 90% of .ai revenues to the government of Anguilla.