ICANN’s new TLD land rush draws 13 applicants for dot-agent alone, with AI a focus for new names

When ICANN revealed the 1,615 applications for new top-level domains (TLDs) on Wednesday, it provided a peek into efforts to control mindshare and organization perceptions via URL naming.

Existing TLDs include .com, .org, .net, .edu and .gov, as well as country-specific TLDs such as .uk and .ca, and an already long list of generic ones, but ICANN envisions even further expanding the number globally, potentially also expanding the headaches for IT teams who must manage routing, allowlists, and blocklists. 

Judging from the number of applicants, there’s considerable enthusiasm for ICANN’s notion.

Although it will be months before ICANN officials can whittle down the list of applications, sort out multiple requests for some TLDs, and ultimately decide who gets which one, Meta seems to be in the tech lead for attempts, with 21 requests, including .aiglasses, .facebook, .instagram, .llama, .messenger, .meta, .metaai, .metaglasses, .metaverse, .muse, .superintelligence, .threads, .vrs, .wearables and .whatsapp. It is also one of 13 organizations seeking to grab .agent.

OpenAI made 15 requests, for everything from the obvious, such as .chatgpt and .openai, to .asi, .codex, .deploy, .evals, .gpt, .mcp, .model, .oai and even .skill and .voice. It, too, is after .agent, and is one of seven trying to register .agi (signifying artificial general intelligence, AI’s Holy Grail).

Amazon submitted applications for eight TLDs, including .alexa, .echo, .eero, .kgs, .kuiper, .leo, .ring and .twitch. Despite its plethora of products, Microsoft only sought two: .msft and .copilot. OpenClaw also asked for two, specifically .claw and .oss, as did Anthropic, which only requested .anthropic and .claude.

Although it’s unclear who, if anyone, will ultimately get either .superintelligence or .si, the battle for those domains is already being fought. And to counter the AI focus, six organizations are looking to acquire the .human TLD.

“Reveal Day marks an important milestone for the next expansion of the Domain Name System,” said Kurtis Lindqvist, president and chief executive officer of ICANN, in its announcement. “These applications demonstrate how organizations around the world are innovating new ways to build trusted online identities, serve their communities, and connect with internet users. ICANN remains focused on administering a fair, transparent, and predictable evaluation process grounded in the policies developed by our global multistakeholder community.” 

Now that the initial list has been published, ICANN’s process gives applicants who also applied for a second choice two weeks to potentially switch. “Applicants may switch to the replacement string only during this period, and only if their replacement string is eligible. If the replacement string is identical to another applied-for primary string, or another replacement string, it cannot be used,” the site said. “Applicants should be aware that replacement strings could end up in contention in the later stages of the program.”

Once that period, known as the string replacement period, has wrapped, a final list will be published, marking the start of the 104 day Community Input and Objections Period during which members of the general public, the ICANN community, governments, and other parties can provide input, raise concerns, or formally object to new generic top-level domain (gTLD) applications before final decisions are made.ComputerworldRead More