The AI domain rush is losing momentum, but AI naming is far from over.
New data from Hostinger, which now manages more than 10 million domains for customers, shows AI-related registrations lagged the market in April–September 2026. Instead, people turned to more practical themes like home, energy and creative projects.
Hostinger, an agentic platform for online business growth, analyzed more than 6.2 million domain registrations from October 2025 to September 2026. Comparing April–September 2026 with the previous six months, total registrations grew 6.7%, while AI-related registrations grew only 1.5%. They peaked in March: by September, AI-related registrations were 12% above their October level, while total registrations were 23% above.
AI-related names grew in 26 of the 45 countries measured. The growth was concentrated in Asia, where AI-related registrations across 12 markets outside India rose 24%, led by Thailand (+47%), Pakistan (+44%) and Vietnam (+42%). In Europe, they fell 6%, with only three of 14 countries growing. The biggest markets also weighed on the total: India grew 3.6%, while the US (−6.6%) and Brazil (−14.5%) fell.
The fastest growth came from practical themes. Home and environment names rose 22.5%, moving from the sixth-largest theme in the first half to the third-largest in August and September. Energy and power (+13.6%) and creative and studios (+10.8%) followed. Crypto and web3 fell 14.1%, and gambling and betting fell 13.6%.
Yet AI is still shaping how people name things. Registrations containing “agent” rose 14.6% and those containing “agentic” rose 16.7%, even as the AI theme as a whole grew just 1.5%. ICANN’s newly published list of applicationsfor new domain extensions points the same way: .agent is tied for the most contested string in the round, with 13 applicants, alongside .lab and .labs, which have 13 between them (7 and 6).
By comparing the two datasets, Hostinger found that interest in new domain extensions doesn’t always match what people and businesses are actually registering today. Applicants filed 22 applications for 8 crypto words, and every one of those words fell in Hostinger registrations, from wallet (−1.6%) to bitcoin (−35.4%). All proposed extensions are still awaiting evaluation, so none has been approved yet.
A separate analysis of .si, Slovenia’s country-code ending, shows the same shift. After a White House executive order signed on September 29 directed federal agencies to use “super intelligence” (SI) instead of “AI”, Hostinger customers registered almost 35,000 .si domains in just two weeks. Only about 3% of those names contain explicit AI terms, while 13% are short names, suggesting demand for the ending itself, as AI hype moves toward new terminology.
Domain registrations do not prove that every name represents a launched business or that a particular trend will last. But they offer a view into the language people choose when taking ideas online. In 2026, that language is practical, and the vocabulary of AI is evolving from agent to agentic to SI.
“The AI boom isn’t over, it’s changing shape. The word ‘AI’ alone is no longer driving registrations, but the vocabulary around it is spreading, from ‘agentic’ to, most recently, ‘SI’. For businesses, the advice is simple: when a new ending or trend takes off, secure your key names early. Defending a name costs far less time, effort, and money than reclaiming it later,” said Klaudijus Januitis, Head of Domains at Hostinger. registered almost 35,000 .si domains in just two weeks.
Only about 3% of those names contain explicit AI terms, while 13% are short names, suggesting demand for the ending itself, as AI hype moves toward new terminology.
Domain registrations do not prove that every name represents a launched business or that a particular trend will last. But they offer a view into the language people choose when taking ideas online. In 2026, that language is practical, and the vocabulary of AI is evolving from agent to agentic to SI.
“The AI boom isn’t over, it’s changing shape. The word ‘AI’ alone is no longer driving registrations, but the vocabulary around it is spreading, from ‘agentic’ to, most recently, ‘SI’. For businesses, the advice is simple: when a new ending or trend takes off, secure your key names early. Defending a name costs far less time, effort, and money than reclaiming it later,” said Klaudijus Januitis, Head of Domains at Hostinger.
Methodology
Hostinger analyzed domain registrations between October 2025 and September 2026. The analysis excludes refunded and unregistered domains and transfers, and groups second-level domains into 20 thematic categories using keyword matching. Growth figures compare April–September 2026 with October 2025–March 2026. About 35% of registrations match a keyword group, and country figures cover markets with at least 100 keyword-matched registrations in the theme in both halves. Regions are Hostinger groupings of the countries measured.Separately, Hostinger compared its keyword data with the list of applications for new top-level domains that ICANN published on October 7, 2026. Applicant counts are the number of distinct applicants with an active application for each string.
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This entry was posted on October 14, 2026 at 10:11 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Hostinger. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Guest Post: From “AI” to “agentic” to “SI”: AI domain registrations stall as naming moves on
The AI domain rush is losing momentum, but AI naming is far from over.
New data from Hostinger, which now manages more than 10 million domains for customers, shows AI-related registrations lagged the market in April–September 2026. Instead, people turned to more practical themes like home, energy and creative projects.
Hostinger, an agentic platform for online business growth, analyzed more than 6.2 million domain registrations from October 2025 to September 2026. Comparing April–September 2026 with the previous six months, total registrations grew 6.7%, while AI-related registrations grew only 1.5%. They peaked in March: by September, AI-related registrations were 12% above their October level, while total registrations were 23% above.
AI-related names grew in 26 of the 45 countries measured. The growth was concentrated in Asia, where AI-related registrations across 12 markets outside India rose 24%, led by Thailand (+47%), Pakistan (+44%) and Vietnam (+42%). In Europe, they fell 6%, with only three of 14 countries growing. The biggest markets also weighed on the total: India grew 3.6%, while the US (−6.6%) and Brazil (−14.5%) fell.
The fastest growth came from practical themes. Home and environment names rose 22.5%, moving from the sixth-largest theme in the first half to the third-largest in August and September. Energy and power (+13.6%) and creative and studios (+10.8%) followed. Crypto and web3 fell 14.1%, and gambling and betting fell 13.6%.
Yet AI is still shaping how people name things. Registrations containing “agent” rose 14.6% and those containing “agentic” rose 16.7%, even as the AI theme as a whole grew just 1.5%. ICANN’s newly published list of applicationsfor new domain extensions points the same way: .agent is tied for the most contested string in the round, with 13 applicants, alongside .lab and .labs, which have 13 between them (7 and 6).
By comparing the two datasets, Hostinger found that interest in new domain extensions doesn’t always match what people and businesses are actually registering today. Applicants filed 22 applications for 8 crypto words, and every one of those words fell in Hostinger registrations, from wallet (−1.6%) to bitcoin (−35.4%). All proposed extensions are still awaiting evaluation, so none has been approved yet.
A separate analysis of .si, Slovenia’s country-code ending, shows the same shift. After a White House executive order signed on September 29 directed federal agencies to use “super intelligence” (SI) instead of “AI”, Hostinger customers registered almost 35,000 .si domains in just two weeks. Only about 3% of those names contain explicit AI terms, while 13% are short names, suggesting demand for the ending itself, as AI hype moves toward new terminology.
Domain registrations do not prove that every name represents a launched business or that a particular trend will last. But they offer a view into the language people choose when taking ideas online. In 2026, that language is practical, and the vocabulary of AI is evolving from agent to agentic to SI.
“The AI boom isn’t over, it’s changing shape. The word ‘AI’ alone is no longer driving registrations, but the vocabulary around it is spreading, from ‘agentic’ to, most recently, ‘SI’. For businesses, the advice is simple: when a new ending or trend takes off, secure your key names early. Defending a name costs far less time, effort, and money than reclaiming it later,” said Klaudijus Januitis, Head of Domains at Hostinger. registered almost 35,000 .si domains in just two weeks.
Only about 3% of those names contain explicit AI terms, while 13% are short names, suggesting demand for the ending itself, as AI hype moves toward new terminology.
Domain registrations do not prove that every name represents a launched business or that a particular trend will last. But they offer a view into the language people choose when taking ideas online. In 2026, that language is practical, and the vocabulary of AI is evolving from agent to agentic to SI.
“The AI boom isn’t over, it’s changing shape. The word ‘AI’ alone is no longer driving registrations, but the vocabulary around it is spreading, from ‘agentic’ to, most recently, ‘SI’. For businesses, the advice is simple: when a new ending or trend takes off, secure your key names early. Defending a name costs far less time, effort, and money than reclaiming it later,” said Klaudijus Januitis, Head of Domains at Hostinger.
Methodology
Hostinger analyzed domain registrations between October 2025 and September 2026. The analysis excludes refunded and unregistered domains and transfers, and groups second-level domains into 20 thematic categories using keyword matching. Growth figures compare April–September 2026 with October 2025–March 2026. About 35% of registrations match a keyword group, and country figures cover markets with at least 100 keyword-matched registrations in the theme in both halves. Regions are Hostinger groupings of the countries measured.Separately, Hostinger compared its keyword data with the list of applications for new top-level domains that ICANN published on October 7, 2026. Applicant counts are the number of distinct applicants with an active application for each string.
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This entry was posted on October 14, 2026 at 10:11 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Hostinger. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.