.asi
Is .asi a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.asi is contested: 5 applications for it are on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 8 October 2026. They are Identity Digital, OpenAI, Starlight (Namecheap), Radix and Link Freedom Group. Nano Labs named .asi as a backup string for its .deep application. ICANN deactivated it, because another applicant applied for the same string or named it as a backup.
Who is applying, and what they run today
Two of the five already run TLDs, 25.23M names between them. Link Freedom Group, OpenAI and Starlight (Namecheap) run none.
Will names sell?
A bet that 'ASI' (artificial superintelligence) becomes household jargon; until then it reads as insider shorthand few projects would build on.
Last round the AI scored the 2012 strings blind to their fate. Strings it scored 60 or more hold a median 27,168 names today; those under 30, a median of 30. .asi’s closest 2012 strings hold .ott 4, .cloud 552K and .cfd 688K.
The nearest 2012 strings, and how many names each holds today
The closest 2012 string, .ott, held 4 names, June 2026. .cloud held 551,867; .cfd held 688,049. Chosen by AI from every string in the 2012 round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Same bet: a three-letter insider acronym for an emerging technology paradigm rather than a company or a plain category noun, sold to the operators and vendors building that paradigm, and it only works if the industry's own shorthand stays the shorthand long enough for firms to hang primary identity on it.
The era-defining frontier-technology term whose value rests entirely on a buzzword becoming a durable industry category that every vendor wants to be seen inside — the same speculative wager .asi makes, differing mainly in that it is a spelled-out noun rather than an acronym.
An opaque technical acronym meaningless outside its field but load-bearing inside it, aimed at the firms whose whole business is that concept, which is the same structural bet as .asi even though the field is finance rather than compute.
Where they meet elsewhere
Identity Digital and Link Freedom Group face each other in 68 contests this round, .asi included.
- Identity Digital × Link Freedom Group
- Identity Digital × Radix
- Link Freedom Group × Radix
- Identity Digital × Starlight (Namecheap)
- Link Freedom Group × Starlight (Namecheap)
AI-hype speculators, futurist/AGI-adjacent projects, and personal-brand registrants who want to signal superintelligence ambitions; a secondary pool of defensive registrations by AI companies is plausible but not primary demand.
What a .asi domain is
.asi is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, in our AI & tech category. 5 applications for it are on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .asi domain extension real yet?
.asi is not yet a domain extension you can register: nothing resolves under it, and no registrar sells names in it. It is a string applicants have put forward in the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, the process that decides whether it becomes one.
When can you buy a .asi domain?
You can’t yet. A .asi name can only be registered once the string is delegated (added to the DNS root) and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .asi was .ott, delegated on 27 May 2016.
Is .asi a real TLD?
Not yet. .asi is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .asi is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Starlight (Namecheap) · noteDomain Name Wire
- Nano Labs · first recordedICANN
- 3 applicants · first recordedICANN
- 2 applicants · now confirmedICANN
- Radix · first recordedRadix
- Link Freedom Group · first recordedLink Freedom Group
The source’s 6 linesHide the lines
AEI2688T-T84808 · Adhara Exploration, Inc. · primary · contention set 2026-16 ITL2677T-T82159 · Ipollo Tech Ltd · replacement string of .deep · Deactivated LFGL2683T-T23706 · Link Freedom Group Ltd · primary · contention set 2026-16 OOL2614T-T29254 · OPENAI OPCO, LLC · primary · contention set 2026-16 RTIS2674T-T93981 · Radix Technologies Inc SEZC · primary · contention set 2026-16 TT2652T-T86687 · Toddler Logic, LLC · primary · contention set 2026-16
The source’s 5 linesHide the lines
AEI2688T-T84808 · Adhara Exploration, Inc. · primary · contention set 2026-16 LFGL2683T-T23706 · Link Freedom Group Ltd · primary · contention set 2026-16 OOL2614T-T29254 · OPENAI OPCO, LLC · primary · contention set 2026-16 RTIS2674T-T93981 · Radix Technologies Inc SEZC · primary · contention set 2026-16 TT2652T-T86687 · Toddler Logic, LLC · primary · contention set 2026-16
“Radix has applied for these TLDs; we do not own or operate them today.”Radix
“For us, moving into the registry side is a natural extension of what we have been building.”Domain Name Wire
“.asi · AI & Tech · “Smarter than you thought possible.””Link Freedom Group
- Band chosen: 10-29, vanity/narrow. The string 'asi' is an acronym for artificial superintelligence, a term currently used mostly inside AI-enthusiast and research-adjacent circles rather than by mainstream buyers. By analogy (flagged as such), the AI category already has a dominant namespace habit: serious AI projects overwhelmingly reach for the established two-letter AI-associated ending, and additional AI-flavored endings have historically struggled to displace an incumbent default. Over the next 5 years, .asi demand looks event-driven, spiking with superintelligence news cycles, with few projects plausibly adopting it as a primary identity, weak brand signal to non-experts (who may misread it, e.g., as the Spanish word 'asi'), and a thin aftermarket. It is not in the 30-49 band because there is no visible path to volume or price-driven sustained registration: the buyer pool is a subset of an already-served AI market, not a new one. It is not in the 1-9 band because a real, if shallow, registrant pool exists: hype-cycle speculators and futurist projects would register at launch, and the AI category itself has genuine ongoing demand that a small fraction could spill into this string. The applicant, Link Freedom Group, filed more than 300 strings in the ICANN 2026 round (the largest applicant of the round, per its voluntarily published list, press-corroborated by Domain Name Wire, 2026-08-13), and lists this string under 'AI & Tech' with the tagline 'Smarter than you thought possible.'; a large-portfolio applicant context suggests broad speculative positioning rather than a category-anchored adoption push, which informs adoption likelihood only. Main market uncertainty: whether 'ASI' crosses from insider jargon into mainstream consumer vocabulary within 5 years; if superintelligence becomes the framing the public uses for AI, the string's meaning becomes self-explanatory and demand could re-rate upward.