Ten companies, including Meta and OpenAI, have applied for the .agent top-level domain in ICANN’s latest round, The Verge reports. Seven applicants seek .agi, including OpenAI. The applications put AI terms among the names companies want to control at the end of web addresses.
ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is taking applications for new top-level domains for the first time in years. The Verge reports 1,615 applications from 481 applicants. A top-level domain is the suffix in an address, such as .com or .org.
The applications are an early step. The Verge says nothing will become official before sometime in 2027. For an AI company choosing an address today, these names remain prospective options.
AI terms attract competing applicants
The interest extends beyond .agent and .agi. Six companies seek .asi, including OpenAI. Four applied for .intelligence, and Meta is one of two applicants for .superintelligence.
Those counts describe companies seeking the suffixes themselves. They do not count businesses buying individual addresses under them. That distinction matters when judging how popular the new names might become.
OpenAI submitted 15 TLD applications in total, while Meta submitted 21, according to The Verge. Their requests include company and product names as well as generic terms.
Company names are a separate bet
The round includes 345 brand applications. OpenAI seeks .chatgpt, .codex, .openai and .gpt, among others. Anthropic applied for .anthropic and .claude. Meta’s applications include .facebook, .instagram, .messenger, .meta, .frommeta and .threads.
The Verge describes brand domains as names a company can use for its own purposes. Generic suffixes could appeal to many unrelated businesses. A product address under .claude and an address under .agent would therefore represent different uses of the new round, even though both involve AI.
Adoption remains an open question. The Verge notes that .ai and .app have gained some popularity, while many alternative suffixes have struggled to become familiar to users. The application totals show interest from applicants. They leave future use by website owners and visitors unsettled.
