.nano
Is .nano a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
Nobody has applied for .nano in its own right, as of 7 October 2026. Radix named .nano as a backup string for its .labs application. ICANN deactivated it, because another applicant applied for the same string or named it as a backup. Link Freedom Group named .nano as a backup string for its .url application. ICANN deactivated it, because another applicant applied for the same string or named it as a backup.
Nobody has applied for .nano in its own right.
Will names sell?
A niche tech-flavored ending for nanotech and tiny-scale brands; usable, but most serious buyers will likely still pick a mainstream domain.
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. .nano’s closest 2012 strings hold .bio 69K, .eco 10K and .solar 10K.
The nearest 2012 strings, and how many names each holds today
The closest 2012 string, .bio, held 69,202 names, June 2026. .eco held 9,939; .solar held 10,063. Chosen by AI from every string in the 2012 round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Same bet exactly: a short scientific combining-form that names a whole deep-tech sector, offered as an open generic to labs, materials startups and suppliers who want the field's shorthand as their primary identity, with the same secondary adjectival use.
Also a prefix-morpheme rather than a standalone category noun, betting that a technology-and-values movement is coherent enough that its member firms will re-root their identity on the movement's shorthand.
The narrow deep-tech vertical version of the same bet: a real but modest industry whose own companies and suppliers are the entire addressable market, so it lives or dies on trade adoption rather than consumer volume.
nanotechnology and materials-science companies, labs, and hardware startups branding around smallness; secondarily, the community around the Nano cryptocurrency and makers of 'nano'-named compact products.
What a .nano domain is
.nano is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, in our AI & tech category. Nobody has applied for .nano in its own right. It is named on ICANN’s list as part of an application for another string.
Is the .nano domain extension real yet?
.nano is not yet a domain extension you can register: nothing resolves under it, and no registrar sells names in it. Nobody has applied for it on the public record; the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round is the process that would decide whether it becomes one.
When can you buy a .nano domain?
You can’t yet. A .nano 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 .nano was .bio, delegated on 2 June 2014.
Is .nano a real TLD?
Not yet. .nano is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because ICANN’s list names .nano as part of an application for another string. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Radix · first recordedICANN
- Link Freedom Group · now deactivated backupICANN
- Link Freedom Group · now abandonedICANN
- Link Freedom Group · first recordedLink Freedom Group
“LFGL2683T-T45201 · Link Freedom Group Ltd · replacement string of .url · Deactivated RTIS2674T-T67708 · Radix Technologies Inc SEZC · replacement string of .labs · Deactivated”ICANN
“.nano · AI & Tech · “One billionth at a time.””Link Freedom Group
- Band chosen: usable but limited (30-49). 'Nano' is a genuine scientific prefix with broad recognition across nanotech, compact hardware, and a cryptocurrency of the same name, which gives it more substance than a vanity or joke string, so it sits above the 10-29 band. But there is no visible category where .nano would function as a primary-identity default over the next 5 years: nanotech firms and hardware makers have historically branded on mainstream endings (an inference from analogy with science-adjacent TLDs, which have tended to see low-volume, discount-driven registration rather than flagship use), and the applicant's own positioning as AI & Tech is aspirational rather than evidence of demand, keeping it below the 50-69 strong-niche band. The tagline 'One billionth at a time.' leans on the metric-prefix meaning, which is clever but narrow as a buyer proposition. Registration counts, pricing, and adoption figures for analogous strings are unknown, so this judgment is qualitative. Main market uncertainty: whether any organized community, most plausibly the Nano cryptocurrency ecosystem or a nanotech industry cluster, coalesces around the extension as an identity convention within 5 years; without such a nucleus, demand likely stays thin and price-driven.