I have been investing in .AI domain names since well before the current AI boom began.
Today, through Brands.io, I manage one of the largest portfolios of premium .AI domains in the world. We have completed millions of dollars in .AI domain transactions and worked with funded startups, unicorns, established technology companies and entrepreneurs across the world.
Many of our customers are backed by Y Combinator, Techstars, 500 Global, Antler and other leading accelerators and venture investors.
That has given me an interesting view of the AI ecosystem.
I often speak to founders very early, sometimes when they are still deciding what to call the company. They inquire about a domain, tell me what they are building, negotiate and sometimes share what stage they are at or what their budget looks like.
Quite often, none of this is public yet.
And over the last few months, I have noticed a change.
Why .AI domains may be an early indicator
When someone decides to build a startup, choosing the name and securing the domain are usually among the first things they do.
Idea → Name → Domain → Company → Product → Team → Funding → Launch
It is obviously not always in exactly that order. But the domain tends to sit very close to the beginning.
A founder may acquire a premium .AI domain months before announcing a funding round or launching a product. The company may still be little more than an idea and a small team.
But an important decision has already been made: I am going to build this.
That is why I have come to believe that premium .AI domain activity can provide an unusually early view of entrepreneurial confidence in AI.
The domain gets bought first. The company becomes visible later.
I saw it before ChatGPT
Looking back, 2022 is particularly interesting to me.
I was already actively investing in .AI domains when the extension was still relatively niche. AI was obviously an important technology, but we were nowhere near the level of excitement that followed ChatGPT.
Then, during the months before ChatGPT launched publicly, I started noticing more activity.
Inquiries were were accelerating, and my first significant five figure .AI sales started coming through.
At the time, I did not think of this as some macroeconomic indicator. I simply saw more people building AI companies and more willingness to spend serious money on the right identity.
In retrospect, though, the pattern is interesting.
Founders were already building. Companies were being named. Domains were being acquired.
Then ChatGPT launched in November 2022 and AI went from being an important technology trend to a global phenomenon.
The founders moved first. Domain demand moved with them. The visible boom came later.
That is one reason I am paying close attention to what I am seeing now.
Now I am seeing the reverse
Earlier in 2026, business was still extremely strong. The first quarter was particularly good for us.
Over the last two to three months, however, things have changed noticeably.
We are seeing fewer serious inquiries for premium .AI domains. Fewer negotiations are turning into transactions, and completed sales across my portfolio have slowed.
Domain sales are inherently lumpy, so I would never draw a conclusion from one quiet month. A couple of large transactions can completely change the numbers.
What interests me more is the change in the underlying conversations.
After years in this market, you develop a sense for normal fluctuations and what a healthy pipeline of serious buyers feels like.
What I am seeing now feels different.
The geographic shift is interesting too
For much of the AI boom, the overwhelming majority of serious demand I saw for premium .AI domains came from the United States.
At some points, I would estimate that around 85 to 90 percent of meaningful inbound demand was coming from the U.S.
That is no longer what I am seeing.
Over the last few months, one of the most noticeable changes has been a significant increase in inquiries from China.
Chinese buyers now account for a much more visible share of serious inbound interest than they did previously. I am also seeing activity from India and elsewhere in Asia Pacific, but the increase in Chinese inquiries has been particularly noticeable.
What interests me is the change in where demand is coming from.
The United States has been at the centre of the generative AI startup boom. It is where enormous amounts of venture capital have been deployed, where many of the most aggressively funded AI startups were created and, for years, where most of my premium .AI demand originated.
If U.S. founder demand is cooling while a greater share of inquiries is now coming from China and elsewhere in Asia, I think that change is worth watching.
Inquiries matter more than the sales numbers
This is why I pay so much attention to inquiries rather than just completed transactions.
A sale is the end of the process.
Before that, founders ask about domains. They discuss names. They negotiate. They compare alternatives. Sometimes they ask for my opinion on which name makes the most sense for what they are building.
Those conversations give me visibility into intent.
I can see where buyers are coming from, how serious they are, what they are willing to spend and how quickly they make decisions.
When fewer credible founders and funded companies enter those conversations, it tells me something before it appears in a quarterly report.
And several of those signals have softened recently.
Funding data may tell us later
AI funding still looks extremely strong.
Huge rounds continue to be announced, and enormous amounts of capital are still flowing into the sector.
But that does not necessarily contradict what I am seeing.
A funding round announced today may have been negotiated months earlier. Many of the AI companies raising huge amounts of capital today were founded years ago.
You can also have record amounts of money flowing into a handful of established AI leaders while fewer entrepreneurs are deciding to start entirely new AI companies.
Those are very different signals.
If fewer founders are making that decision, I would expect premium domain demand to feel it before funding databases do.
AI can transform the world and still have a bust cycle
None of this means I think AI is a fad.
I believe artificial intelligence will transform enormous parts of the global economy.
But transformative technologies still have cycles.
The internet changed the world and also produced the dot-com bubble. Telecommunications transformed global communication and still went through an enormous investment bust.
The technology can be revolutionary while the capital cycle around it becomes excessive.
AI has attracted extraordinary amounts of money and attention over the last few years. Thousands of companies have been created, valuations have expanded rapidly and almost every technology company has found a way to position itself around AI.
That pace cannot continue forever.
At some point, investors have to become more selective and distinguish between companies that call themselves AI companies and genuinely good businesses that use AI to solve important problems.
We may be getting closer to that point.
Why say this when I invest in .AI?
Some fellow domain investors may find this post counterintuitive.
After all, I own a large portfolio of .AI domains. Wouldn't it be in my interest to keep telling everyone that .AI domains will continue going up?
I don't think that is how an investor should think.
In March 2025, I wrote a post titled Why Premium .AI Domains Are the Best Investment Asset Class in 2025 . At the time, I was extremely bullish on the market because that was what I was seeing in the data, in buyer behaviour and in my own transactions.
In my own experience, that call proved well timed. 2025 turned out to be an exceptional year for .AI domains and for my portfolio.
But being an investor means being willing to change your view when the facts change.
Every asset class has cycles.
The job of an investor is to recognize those cycles, not simply become a salesman for whatever happens to be in your portfolio.
I remain a major .AI investor. I remain convinced of the long term value of exceptional .AI names. But that does not mean I should ignore changes in the market when I see them.
In fact, I think doing so would be the opposite of investing pragmatically.
What .AI domains are telling me
My thesis is simple.
Premium .AI domains sit unusually close to the beginning of the startup creation process.
They were one of the first places where I personally saw the AI boom accelerating in 2022, before ChatGPT made that boom visible to everyone else.
Today, I am beginning to see the opposite.
Fewer serious inquiries.
Fewer negotiations converting into sales.
Slower transactions.
Less U.S. demand.
A noticeably larger share of inquiries coming from China.
None of this proves that an AI bust is coming.
There could be other explanations. Domain markets fluctuate. Buyers may simply be becoming more price conscious. Branding preferences can change. The broader economy matters too.
But when several of these changes appear at the same time, after years of watching this market closely, I think they are worth paying attention to.
Could this signal be useful beyond domains?
This is where the idea becomes particularly interesting to me.
If premium .AI domain activity really does lead the broader AI startup cycle, then perhaps it has implications beyond domain investing.
Could weakening founder demand eventually become an early signal for venture investors, technology investors or even public market investors with large exposure to the AI trade?
Potentially.
For a sophisticated investor, that might mean thinking about concentration risk or whether some exposure should be hedged. At the more aggressive end, investors might even look at whether the signal has implications for AI heavy equity exposure such as the Nasdaq-100.
But I would not pretend that .AI domain data alone can tell someone when to short an index.
The interesting possibility is simply that changes in founder behaviour could show up here before they become obvious in venture funding, earnings or public markets.
If that relationship holds, this small and rather unusual market might be telling us more than we realise.
What happens next?
My view today is that the AI boom may be approaching a cyclical turning point.
Beyond that, I do not pretend to know exactly what happens.
It could turn sharply. It could develop into a longer bust cycle. Or the market could evolve in a completely different way.
.AI domain activity cannot tell us what form the next stage of the cycle will take.
What it may be able to tell us is that founder behaviour is changing before that change becomes obvious elsewhere.
At Brands.io, I have spent years watching these decisions happen in real time, giving me a front row seat to a small but interesting part of the AI economy.
And what I am seeing today is very different from what I was seeing a few years ago.
Before ChatGPT launch, .AI demand was quietly accelerating.
Today, it is quietly slowing.
About the author
Chetan Gera is the Founder of Brands.io, a premium .AI domain marketplace and accredited .AI registrar. He is also a major investor in premium .AI domain names.
Disclaimer: This post reflects my personal observations and views as an investor and is for informational purposes only. It is not investment advice.
