.tex

Is .tex a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?

Places
applicants
  • ArubaAnnounced
on the record since Sep 9, 2026 · updated Sep 9, 2026
AI score
30/ 100
Usable but limited

A niche TLD for texas-identified businesses and personal brands wanting a "Tex" shorthand, plus TeX/LaTeX tool makers and textile or technical-fabric companies looking for a short, on-theme address.

assessed by claude-fable-5-1 · Sep 9, 2026
AI score 30 of 100. .com scores 96, .ai scores 84.
who it’s for

Texas-identified businesses and personal brands wanting a "Tex" shorthand, plus TeX/LaTeX tool makers and textile or technical-fabric companies looking for a short, on-theme address.

PlacestechCommerceCulture
applicants
1 on file
ArubaAnnounced
Sep 9, 2026

Aruba S.p.A. told Domain Name Wire it applied for 39 strings in the 2026 round 'as primary or replacement', listing .tex among them without saying which strings are primary. The claim is the applicant's own, post-filing, relayed by the publication. Founder ruling 2026-09-09: recorded as announced. First application for this string on the record.

closest 2012 bets
3 of 1,408

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.

.motomoderate
delegated 2016 · live2 domains · May 2026

Same bet as the most likely reading of .tex: take a trade's own clipped shorthand for its category (moto for motorcycling, tex for textiles) and sell it as the vertical's namespace, which only works if the abbreviation is legible to buyers and customers without expansion.

2 applicants contested it · scored 38* in 2012 · run by Charleston Road Registry Inc.

.automoderate
delegated 2015 · live600 domains · May 2026

A truncated generic category noun aimed at an entire manufacturing/retail vertical rather than at any one company, betting that the short form reads as the industry itself and beats the longer literal alternatives on memorability.

4 applicants contested it · scored 60* in 2012 · run by Uniregistry, Corp.

.bcnweak
delegated 2015 · live4 domains · May 2026

Parallel only under the competing reading of .tex as a place shorthand (Texas): a three-letter abbreviation that a single geographic constituency must claim and endorse before anyone else's identity can sit on it, which is a different bet from the industry-shorthand one and is included to cover the string's ambiguity.

uncontested · scored 35* in 2012 · run by Municipi de Barcelona

* A separate 2012-only read, time-locked to what was public that year. Different scale from this page’s score, so the two are not comparable.

history
news & sources
AnnouncementExclusive: Aruba applies for 39 top level domain strings
Sep 9, 2026
Aruba S.p.A., which operates the .cloud top level domain, is expanding its domain portfolio. The company told Domain Name Wire that it applied for 39 top level domains in this year's new TLD round. That number includes replacement strings. [...] The company applied for the following strings as primary or replacement: aid, all, ask, beta, bit, bnb, cart, ciao, daily, demo, easy, fix, gaming, gen, genius, gym, happy, hello, hola, human, kit, lab, mars, max, moon, omg, pec, pop, rem, roma, sign, sito, super, tag, tex, vps, yes, zen, zzz
Domain Name Wire (Andrew Allemann), quoting Aruba S.p.A.
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This record is corrected in the open. See the changelog and methodology.