Registered domain names: Verisign's quarterly all-TLD and .com/.net totals since 2015, and monthly per-TLD counts since 2023 for .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.
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. DomainTools estimates the .ai and .io lines, and they come within about 1% of the registry's own counts.
.ai (registry counts)
1.3M+680k 17 moas of Jun 2026
Each point sits on the month its registry figure became public, so the gaps are uneven. This is the only .ai line that starts before ChatGPT.
.ai (DomainTools)
1.4M+548k yras of Aug 2026
⚠ Most TLDs grew fast in 2025 and 2026 (.xyz ×1.85, .app ×1.78, .ai ×1.68). Read .ai's steady climb over the years, not the last one.click a month to drill into daily
.io
1.4M+227k yras of Aug 2026
A control: developers used .io long before AI, and it counts domains the same way as .ai, at a similar size.click a month to drill into daily
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.
.chat
56.2k+9.6k yras of Aug 2026
click a month to drill into daily
.bot
22.8k+6.6k yras of Aug 2026
click a month to drill into daily
.dev
747k+238k yras of Aug 2026
click a month to drill into daily
.app
1.6M+731k yras of Aug 2026
click a month to drill into daily
.tech
564k+101k yras of Aug 2026
click a month to drill into daily
.cloud
538k+147k yras of Aug 2026
click a month to drill into daily
Domain registrations
Verisign counts these domains at the end of each quarter, so the chart has four points a year.
.com + .net
176M+6.3M yras of Mar 2026
A control: the incumbent namespace. Its 2023-24 dip is a real registration cycle that began before ChatGPT.
Mass-market TLD zones
These lines count the names that work in DNS. Buyers pick these two TLDs for the price, not for AI, so read them as controls.
.xyz
9.7M+4.4M yras of Aug 2026
click a month to drill into daily
.com (zone)
166M+6.4M 7 moas of Aug 2026
⚠ The data source stopped for 413 days, from 2024-11 to 2026-01. The chart draws a straight line across the gap.click a month to drill into daily
AI share of the namespace
.ai share of all domains derived
0.3%of all domains+60.2% yras of Mar 2026
We divide the .ai count at each quarter end by the total for all TLDs in that quarter.