ICANN received 1,615 applications for new top-level domains, and AI companies want the best ones

ICANN has received 1,615 applications for new top-level domains from 481 applicants, and AI companies are competing aggressively for the AI-themed suffixes — with ten companies, including Meta and OpenAI, bidding for .agent alone.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, better known as ICANN, has published the statistics from its latest application round. This is the first time in years that the organization has accepted applications for new top-level domains — the suffixes at the end of every URL, such as .com, .org, and .pizza.

The dominance of AI in the applicant pool is unmistakable. According to ICANN's published figures:

• 1,615 applications submitted in total
• 481 distinct applicants
• 10 companies applied for .agent, including Meta and OpenAI
• 7 companies applied for .agi, including OpenAI
• 6 companies applied for .asi, including OpenAI

Why is ICANN opening new domains now?

Top-level domains are the scarce real estate of the internet's addressing system. ICANN controls which suffixes exist, and it has run new application rounds only rarely — the last major expansion brought hundreds of new suffixes to market, from brand domains to generic terms. A multi-year gap between rounds meant that companies wanting a bespoke suffix simply had to wait.

That wait now coincides with the AI boom. The suffixes companies are chasing are not random. .agent maps directly onto the current industry push into AI agents — software systems that act autonomously on a user's behalf. .agi references artificial general intelligence, the hypothesized level of AI capability that labs including OpenAI have named as a long-term goal. .asi points at artificial superintelligence.

In other words, the vocabulary of the AI industry is now being written into the internet's namespace.

Who is competing for what?

The application statistics show OpenAI pursuing the broadest AI namespace strategy of any single applicant. The company appears in the applicant lists for all three of the most contested AI suffixes: .agent, .agi, and .asi.

Meta is competing for .agent as well, setting up a direct clash between two of the industry's biggest names for a suffix that could become a default home for agent-related products and services.

Competition is the defining feature of the round. None of the three AI suffixes has a single uncontested applicant — .agent has ten bidders, .agi has seven, and .asi has six. When multiple applicants seek the same string, ICANN's processes for resolving contested applications come into play, which can mean auctions, community objections, or negotiated withdrawals.

What does this mean for the AI market?

Domain suffixes are a lagging indicator of where an industry thinks value lies. Companies do not spend application fees and legal resources on namespaces they expect to be irrelevant. The rush on .agent tracks the fact that AI agents have become the central product category of the current AI cycle, with every major lab shipping or promising agent-style systems.

The .agi and .asi applications are a different signal. They reflect how labs brand their ambitions. OpenAI's pursuit of all three suggests the company wants to own the terminology of AI's future stages — from agents today to general and superintelligence later — at the level of the internet's addressing system itself.

For consumers and businesses, the practical effect will arrive later. If ICANN approves these suffixes, companies could operate domains that signal AI functionality at a glance, much as .com became shorthand for commercial sites in the early web.

What happens next?

ICANN will now evaluate the 1,615 applications, resolve the many contested strings, and decide which suffixes enter the internet's root zone. The contests over .agent, .agi, and .asi — with OpenAI and Meta among the bidders — will be a test of whether AI's largest companies can extend their brand power from models and apps into the internet's underlying naming system. The outcome will shape how the next generation of AI products presents itself in URLs for years to come.