OpenAI and Meta among bidders for .agent and .agi as ICANN reopens domain applications

ICANN opens the door on new domains

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the body that governs the web's naming system, is accepting applications for new top-level domains for the first time in several years. According to The Verge, the organisation has now published the 1,615 applications submitted so far by 481 distinct applicants, and the dominant theme is unmistakably artificial intelligence.

Top-level domains are the suffixes that sit at the end of every web address, from the everyday .com and .org to the more eccentric corners of the market. Control of one has always been scarce, and this round has drawn an unusually heavy turnout from AI companies.

An AI-shaped land grab

The most contested strings track the industry's current vocabulary closely. The Verge reports that ten companies, including both Meta and OpenAI, have applied for .agent. Seven applicants, among them OpenAI, are chasing .agi, the standard shorthand for artificial general intelligence. OpenAI also appears in a group of six bidders for .asi, a string The Verge connects to President Trump's push to replace the term artificial intelligence with super intelligence.

Further down the list, four companies applied for .intelligence, and Meta is one of just two parties seeking the sprawling .superintelligence. Across the whole round, The Verge counts 15 applications from OpenAI and a hefty 21 from Meta.

Brands queue up for their own suffixes

Applications fall into two broad camps. One is generic: strings that anyone might register under, and this batch includes hundreds of them, from .geek and .haha to .anime, .jackpot and, remarkably, .itiswhatitis.

The other camp is purely corporate. The Verge counts 345 brand applications, ranging from .applebees and .bankofamerica to .zillow and .zoom. Meta has filed for .facebook, .instagram, .messenger, .meta, .frommeta and .threads. Bluesky wants .bsky, reportedly with the aim of building the suffix into its usernames. OpenAI has applied for .chatgpt, .codex, .openai and .gpt among others, while Anthropic is seeking .anthropic and .claude. In The Verge's assessment, such strings could eventually power memorable product pages, social media handles and more.

A market with a patchy record

History counsels caution. As The Verge points out, most alternative top-level domains launched in earlier rounds have struggled: a few, such as .ai and .app, gained traction on the back of tech trends, but the public largely ignored options like .restaurant, and .com ended up mattering more than ever. Running a branded suffix has so far been something only Google and a small number of others have managed, which makes the current flood of brand applications a notable shift in posture.

The announcement is also only an early milestone in a long process. Nothing will become official before sometime next year, according to The Verge.

Why it matters

Owning a top-level domain is a form of infrastructure control: it lets a company mint web addresses on its own terms rather than compete for scarce .com real estate. That the largest AI labs, firms ostensibly building interfaces that could reduce the role of traditional web navigation, are investing so heavily here is itself telling. The Verge's takeaway is that memorable domain names still count for a great deal even in an AI-mediated world, and the AI companies evidently agree.

For the AI ecosystem specifically, the fate of contested strings such as .agent and .agi will decide who, if anyone, holds naming rights over the core vocabulary of the field. For developers and smaller companies, a fresh wave of usable suffixes could relieve some pressure on an exhausted .com namespace, provided the eventual winners price and manage them better than previous rounds did.