The rush to register AI domain names has cooled. Hostinger, which manages more than 10 million domains for customers, analysed more than 6.2 million registrations between October 2025 and September 2026 and found that AI-related names grew 1.5% in April to September, against 6.7% for registrations overall.
AI-related names peaked in March. By September they were 12% above their October level, while total registrations were 23% above. The AI theme ranked 13th among the 20 themes Hostinger tracked, and grew in 26 of the 45 countries measured. Growth was concentrated in Asia, where registrations across 12 markets outside India rose 24%, led by Thailand (+47%), Pakistan (+44%) and Vietnam (+42%). In Europe they fell 6%.
The fastest-growing themes were practical ones: home and environment (+22.5%), energy and power (+13.6%) and creative and studios (+10.8%). Crypto and web3 fell 14.1%, and gambling and betting fell 13.6%.
AI vocabulary is still spreading. Names containing "agent" rose 14.6% and those containing "agentic" rose 16.7%. ICANN's list of applications for new domain extensions, published on 7 October 2026, points the same way: .agent is tied for the most contested string in the round with 13 applicants. Applicants filed 22 applications for eight crypto words, yet every one of those words fell in Hostinger registrations, from wallet (-1.6%) to bitcoin (-35.4%). All proposed extensions are still awaiting evaluation.
Hostinger also reports a surge in .si, Slovenia's country-code ending. After a White House executive order signed on 29 September directed federal agencies to use "super intelligence" in place of "AI", its customers registered almost 35,000 .si domains in two weeks. Only about 3% of those names contain explicit AI terms, while 13% are short names, which Hostinger takes as demand for the ending itself.
"The AI boom isn't over, it's changing shape," said Klaudijus Januitis, Head of Domains at Hostinger. His advice to businesses is to secure key names early when a new ending or trend takes off.
Hostinger notes that registrations do not prove every name became a launched business, or that a trend will last. Its groupings use keyword matching, and about 35% of registrations match a keyword group.
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