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Shane's Domains At Auction for Wednesday, August 5th

Shane's Domains At Auction for Wednesday, August 5th

.ai is now 28% of new startup's go to TLD

Shane Cultra
August 06, 2025

You can’t ignore the obvious, and this chart puts it right in your face. These are the domain names used by Y Combinator startups over the last five years. Dot com still rules, but dot AI is a strong, strong second. Y Combinator is one of the most successful incubators in history, and their track record for producing unicorns is as good as anyone’s.

With that kind of success, where do they guide their companies to brand? Starting this year, more non-dot-coms than dot-coms. First time in history. The “other” category is spread across dozens of TLDs, but what’s not spread out is .ai. If you’re avoiding dot AI, you’re literally missing a quarter of the opportunity to sell names. And if you’re dot com only, you’ve left an equal piece of the pie on the table.

I get it—picking names from over 1,200 “other” TLDs is tough. So I’ll give people a pass there. But not participating in AI is a mistake. The main hurdle with .ai is the high wholesale cost, so I’ll give another pass to those who can’t afford to hold a lot of them. Still, you HAVE to be paying attention and consistently watching for big SLDs in alt TLDs.

Take “Plasma” for example—it has value across at least ten TLDs. And I can think of 500 other keywords that do as well. Finding those on the aftermarket will be the key to adding some serious gravy to your dot com meal.

So where do you start? Right here. Afternic, Atom, Namecheap, Dynadot aftermarket. Between those, I’m sure you can find value and spend all your available cash. Good luck.

Quote of the Day: “Every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain.” — Homer Simpson

Domain of the Day: FluidAi.com Shows how valuable Fluid.com and Fluid.ai are

Please Note: The list below contains affiliate links and/or names that have been posted for a fee. It is how we pay for our time since it is a free site. More details at bottom of page. Can go to any of the auctions by adding the names at the end like this one