.mem
Is .mem a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.mem is not contested. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. It is LongRange Capital.
A short, ambiguous abbreviation (memory? member? memo? meme?) that few serious projects would adopt as their main address.
AI-memory and personal-knowledge startups wanting a short handle, plus memorial, membership and meme-themed sites picking a cheap novelty name
The 2012 applications making the most similar bet. Chosen by AI from every string in that round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Both bet that a clipped three-or-four-letter software noun reads as the whole category's namespace, so any company building in that layer can wear it as primary identity rather than treating it as a brand.
Same bet on developer shorthand: an abbreviation that only a technical audience fully parses, sold to tooling and infrastructure companies who want the function in the name instead of a coined brand.
Same bet that a generic infrastructure primitive is the identity buyers want, with the risk that the word is too foundational for anyone to own and too abstract to pull registrations from outside the technical trade.
What a .mem domain is
.mem is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under AI & tech. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .mem domain extension real yet?
.mem 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 .mem domain?
You can’t yet. ICANN publishes every applied-for string on Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC. A .mem name can only be registered after that, once the string is delegated and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .mem was .app, delegated on 2 July 2015.
Is .mem a real TLD?
Not yet. .mem is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .mem is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- LongRange Capital · first recordedICANN
“APEC2611T-T77002 · Aruba PEC S.P.A. · primary · contention set 2026-199 LDII2637T-T26109 · LRC Digital IP, Inc. · primary · contention set 2026-199 LDII2637T-T45959 · LRC Digital IP, Inc. · replacement string of .mem · Deactivated”ICANN
- Band chosen: 10-29 (vanity/narrow), near its top. The string "mem" is an abbreviation with several competing readings - memory, member, memo, meme, memorial, and "meme" in French - and that ambiguity weakens the brand signal a TLD is supposed to carry; a visitor seeing "name.mem" cannot infer what the site is. The one clear growth pocket is AI memory (agent memory layers, personal knowledge tools), where "mem" is already a recognisable shorthand and a short handle such as "agent.mem" could appeal to a startup; that is the AI dimension and the main reason the string is not in the 1-9 band. It is not in the 30-49 band because, by analogy (flagged as analogy) with other short-abbreviation and single-concept TLDs such as .meme and .memorial, which have drawn thin, vanity-style registration rather than volume or primary-identity use, I do not expect sustained registrations at volume nor an aftermarket; serious AI-memory companies are more likely to keep a .com or .ai as their primary identity and use .mem, if at all, as a redirect or product subdomain. Applicant facts from the record are neutral: a single confirmed standard application from LongRange Capital (LRC Digital IP, Inc.), with no category tag recorded; a standard (non-brand) application implies the registry would be open to the public, which is the basis for assuming general availability. Over the next 5 years I expect a small, interest-driven base with weak resale value. Main market uncertainty: whether "mem" consolidates as the public-facing label for the AI-memory product category, which would pull the string toward the 30-49 band; current pricing, registration volumes and comparable-TLD counts are unknown to me under the rules here.