Registered domain names: Verisign's quarterly all-TLD and .com/.net totals since 2015, and monthly per-TLD counts since 2023 for .si, .ai and .io, the AI and developer zones (.chat, .bot, .dev, .app, .tech, .cloud), mass-market zones as controls, and .ai's derived share of all domains.
cadence · monthly16 seriesupdated 21 Oct 2026www.dnib.com ↗
Verisign changed how it counts domains in 2016-Q3 and 2021-Q4, so the line steps down twice; the internet did not lose those domains.
AI-adjacent TLDs
These lines count every registered domain. The .si line is the registry's own count. DomainTools estimates the .ai and .io lines, and they come within about 1% of the registry's own counts.
⚠ In late September 2026 the US government started to call AI "super intelligence", or SI. .si is the domain of Slovenia, and its registrations jumped after that.
A control: the incumbent namespace. Its 2023-24 dip is a real registration cycle that began before ChatGPT.
AI & developer TLD zones
These lines count the names that work in DNS, about 70-75% of all registered names, so they sit below a registration count. .dev, .app, .tech and .cloud are controls.
We divide each day's .ai count by Verisign's total for all TLDs. Between its quarterly totals we draw a straight line, and after the last one we keep that total.
We divide each day's .ai plus .si count by Verisign's total for all TLDs. Between its quarterly totals we draw a straight line, and after the last one we keep that total.
Figures
Domains (DNIB): latest figure, change, range and coverage of each series
