Identity Digital has applied for 216 new domain extensions in ICANN’s Next Round, the first major opportunity to expand the global top-level domain system since 2012. For the domain industry, the number itself is striking. Identity Digital already operates the world’s largest portfolio of TLDs, with more than 270 extensions and over 28 million registered domains, so 216 additional applications represent a major strategic bet on another period of expansion in internet naming.
The applications cover 13 categories: AI, Web3 and crypto, finance, commerce and retail, media and creators, technology and infrastructure, trade and industry, professional services, travel and hospitality, identity and trust, gambling, generic terms, and health and wellness. Identity Digital says the strings were selected through a five-stage process that examined changing language, naming behavior and emerging demand rather than simply assembling a large collection of attractive dictionary terms.
The timing makes this round very different from 2012. That expansion ultimately added more than 1,200 extensions to the internet, but it happened before the generative-AI boom, before autonomous AI agents became a realistic technology and before much of today’s cloud, creator and digital-finance economy developed. Identity Digital is effectively selecting extensions for an internet it expects to look quite different over the next decade.
AI appears central to that thesis. New AI companies already need identities, websites, APIs and recognizable brands, but autonomous agents could extend the naming problem much further. If millions of specialized agents eventually operate across the internet on behalf of businesses and individuals, those agents will also need identifiable and potentially verifiable digital addresses. Identity Digital sees that development as a source of new demand rather than a threat to the traditional domain-name system.
That is an interesting position because AI is sometimes presented as another technology that could reduce the importance of domain names. Users increasingly obtain information through search engines, social networks, apps and now AI assistants without manually entering a web address. Yet the underlying services still need identities and locations. In fact, an internet containing vastly more software agents and machine-operated services could increase the need for persistent, platform-independent naming.
For domain investors, the applications are worth watching for another reason. Identity Digital has two decades of operating experience and registration data across hundreds of extensions. Its choices therefore provide a rare indication of where a major registry operator believes durable naming demand may emerge. The emphasis on AI, finance, commerce, technology, creators and identity is not simply a commentary on fashionable industries; applying for and operating a TLD is a long-term business decision dependent on registrations and, crucially, renewals.
The Next Round could nevertheless create a complicated environment for domain investors. More extensions mean more opportunities to obtain highly intuitive combinations, but they also mean much more supply. The experience following the 2012 round showed that registration volume alone does not necessarily produce a healthy aftermarket. Some extensions achieved substantial adoption while many others remained niche products, and relatively few approached the aftermarket liquidity of established extensions such as .com.
The strongest new extensions are likely to be those where the word after the dot actually contributes meaning to the complete domain. A good domain is not automatically created by attaching a fashionable TLD to an ordinary keyword. The combination has to work linguistically, commercially and visually. This becomes particularly important if hundreds of additional extensions eventually reach the market.
There may also be a broader change in what a domain represents. Historically, the domain was primarily the address of a website and later became part of a company’s email and online identity. In an AI-heavy internet, domains could increasingly identify APIs, agents, data services, machine endpoints and digital credentials alongside conventional websites. The DNS already provides a global, decentralized naming layer, which gives it an advantage over identities that exist only inside individual technology platforms.
Identity Digital is clearly positioning itself for that possibility. Its existing infrastructure operates on AWS and supports tens of millions of registrations, giving the company the technical and registrar distribution network needed to bring additional extensions to market if its applications succeed.
There is an important caveat: these 216 strings are applications, not operating extensions. They remain subject to ICANN evaluation, and an application does not guarantee that the corresponding TLD will ultimately be delegated. None of the domains under these proposed extensions can currently be reserved or registered.
Still, the scale of the application portfolio makes the announcement one of the more consequential signals yet from the domain registry industry ahead of the Next Round. A company already operating more than 270 extensions is seeking another 216 at precisely the moment when AI is beginning to change how digital identities are created and used.
The bet is fairly clear. Identity Digital does not believe domains are being displaced by AI. It believes AI is about to create another enormous class of things that need to be named.