Which AI startups use .si domains? (2026)

Clerion Research Team9 October 202611 min read

As of October 2026, very few AI startups use .si domains for their product. Recursive bought Recursive.si for $20,000 and redirects it to its .com, while most of the September rush went to resellers and defensive buyers. Hostinger says only about 3% of its .si sales are clearly AI-related.

Near-black gradient with blue light rising from below, banner reading AI startups on .si

As of October 2026, almost no AI startups use .si domains for their actual product. The one well-documented case is Recursive, which bought Recursive.si for $20,000 and points it at its .com. Most of the tens of thousands of .si names registered since late September are resale stock, defensive buys or unused.

That is the short answer to a question a lot of founders are now asking ChatGPT and Perplexity: which AI startups use .si domains? The longer answer is more useful, because it tells you what the people who know this market are doing with their own money. They buy the side door and keep living in the house.

If you are new to the term, our explainer on what SI means covers the September 2026 rename, and our guide to buying a .si domain covers price and setup. This post covers the part neither does: who is really there.

Which AI startups use .si domains today?

The only AI startup with a documented, public .si purchase is Recursive (also called Recursive Superintelligence). According to Dynadot, it paid $20,000 for Recursive.si and redirects the name to its .com. No other well-known AI lab or startup had a confirmed .si purchase on record as of 9 October 2026.

Dynadot's write-up, last updated 2 October 2026, describes Recursive as a San Francisco and London AI startup that came out of stealth in May 2026 with $650 million in funding at a $4.65 billion valuation. The detail that matters for you is what Recursive did with the name. It did not move. The .si address forwards to the .com, which is exactly the setup our guide recommends.

Here is everything we could confirm from pages we opened this week:

Company What it did with .si Source
Recursive (AI startup) Bought Recursive.si for $20,000, redirects to its .com Dynadot
Genius PR (PR firm, not an AI startup) CEO Kim Than bought the .si version of the company name TechCrunch
Militaria.pl (retailer, not AI) Bought Military.si for $1,795 Dynadot
SpaceXAI (formerly xAI) Musk said on 4 October it will become "SpaceXSI". No .si domain mentioned TechSpot
Clerion (us) Owns clerion.si, which redirects to getclerion.com Checked 9 October 2026

That table is short on purpose. Plenty of listicles imply that "AI startups are quietly buying .si domains". When you check their sources, most name one company, and it is Recursive.

What happens when you type a big AI brand with .si?

On 9 October 2026 we typed the names of well-known AI products with a .si ending and recorded where each one went. Not one of them led to the AI company itself. The names were held by Slovenian businesses that got there first, sat on resale marketplaces, or showed a "domain unavailable" page.

Here is what came back:

Address What loaded on 9 October 2026
cursor.si Cursor d.o.o., an IT services company in Maribor, Slovenia, with a footer dated 2003 to 2026
mistral.si A Slovenian information site about Mediterranean winds and sailing weather
anthropic.si A Slovenian-language software services site. It does not say it is connected to Anthropic, the AI company
perplexity.si A Spaceship registrar page titled "Domain Unavailable For Purchase"
lovable.si Redirected to a sale listing on the Atom domain marketplace
cohere.si Redirected to a sale listing on the Atom domain marketplace
openai.si, recursive.si Blocked our automated check, so we cannot say

Two patterns show up. First, common English words were registered in Slovenia years ago by local firms with real businesses. "Cursor" and "mistral" mean something on their own, and a Maribor IT company has used cursor.si for over two decades. Second, the famous names that were still free got picked up and listed for sale.

This is a small sample, eight names checked by hand. It is not a census. But it matches what the registrar data below says at scale.

Who is buying all the new .si domains, then?

Mostly resellers and defensive buyers, not AI companies building on the name. Registry SI reported a 2,199% jump in .si purchases in September 2026, per TechCrunch. Yet Hostinger told TechCrunch only about 3% of its .si sales were clearly AI-related, and Netcraft found over half of one batch listed for resale.

The numbers, with dates:

  1. The spike. On 23 September 2026 the registry counter showed 4,794 new .si names in 24 hours, more than the 3,515 in the whole prior month. By 1 October it showed 13,603 in a day, and September ran about 13 times August, according to Netcraft's 1 October report.
  2. The resale share. About 52% of the .si names registered at Dynadot between 19 and 22 September were already listed on Dynadot's aftermarket by 23 September, per Netcraft's 24 September report.
  3. The mirror names. More than 44,000 registered .si names, 22% of the zone at the time, share their name with an existing .ai domain, like meta.ai and meta.si. Only about 1,500 of those pairs point at the same server, and Netcraft warns many of those are for sale too.
  4. The buyers. Hostinger says 22,800 .si names went to 8,000 buyers between 23 September and early October, according to Euronews. The US and India make up about half. Buyers in Morocco averaged 4.9 names each, against 2.8 overall.

Put those together and the shape is plain: thousands of buyers grabbed several addresses each, and a big chunk went straight onto a for-sale page. That is what a domain rush looks like. It is not what a product migration looks like.

Why aren't AI startups moving their product to .si?

Because the costs land on the startup and the upside lands on the name. Google treats .si as a Slovenian address, the obvious brand names are often owned by Slovenian firms, and nothing requires a private company to say "SI". A redirect captures the upside without the costs.

The search point is the big one. Google's guide to multi-regional sites lists the country-code endings it treats as generic. The list includes .ai, .io and .co. It does not include .si. To Google, a site on .si is a strong signal that it is meant for Slovenia, and the page notes this list may change, not that it will.

The policy point matters too. The September executive order changes wording in federal government materials. As our SI explainer covers, it does not tell private businesses what to call their products. Even SpaceXAI's rename is a name change: when TechSpot wrote it up on 5 October, the company website and X account had not yet changed.

The people closest to the sales say the same. Hostinger's head of domains, Klaudijus Januitis, told TechCrunch he expects .si demand to keep growing but does not see it replacing .ai.

Should your AI startup buy its .si name now?

Yes, if your exact name is still free and the .com or .ai is already yours. Buy it at normal retail, around $12 a year per TechCrunch, and redirect it to your main site. Do not host your product on it, and do not pay aftermarket prices for a defensive name.

Say you run an AI meeting-notes tool called Notewise on notewise.ai. A .si copy costs you about the price of lunch each year. Left unregistered, it costs you nothing today. But if a reseller picks it up, you either pay their asking price or watch someone else control a one-letter typo of your real address.

Here is how to decide quickly:

Your situation What to do
Your exact name is free on .si Register it for a year, turn on auto-renew, 301 redirect to your main domain
It is listed on a marketplace for hundreds or thousands Skip it. A redirect is not worth aftermarket money
A Slovenian business uses it for real work Leave it. They were there first, and that is not squatting
You sell mainly in Slovenia .si can be your primary domain. The country signal helps you

Step-by-step setup, registrar prices and redirect configs are in our guide to buying a .si domain.

Is someone going to squat my brand's .si name?

Possibly, and the risk is less about resale than about typos. On a QWERTY keyboard "s" sits next to "a", so yourbrand.si is a one-key slip from yourbrand.ai. Netcraft flagged this lookalike risk and expects fraud on .si to rise if the ending starts to look trustworthy.

As of its 1 October report, Netcraft had not seen an increase in phishing tied to the rename. It had found speculation spreading beyond .si: 87 .com names pairing brand names with "superintelligence", registered at Spaceship on 29 September before the order was signed, each listed at $20,000.

If someone does register your .si name and uses it to imitate you, the .si registry runs a dispute procedure, covered with the other rules in our post on who controls .si. The cheaper fix is to own the name before that happens.

Will big AI companies switch to .si after the SI rename?

There is no sign of it as of 9 October 2026. The most prominent AI company to adopt "SI" so far is SpaceXAI, and that was a name change announced in an X reply, not a domain move. The confirmed .si buyers are a startup using a redirect and a handful of non-AI firms.

Watch two things if you want an early signal. First, whether any major lab starts printing a .si address in its own marketing, not just owning one. Second, whether Google ever adds .si to its list of generic endings. Until one of those happens, the safe reading is that .si is a cheap side door for AI brands, not a new front door.

It is also worth separating the domain from the word. You may well want "SI" in your copy, since people are starting to type it into assistants. That is a wording decision for your pages. Where your site lives is a different decision, and for an AI startup selling worldwide the answer is still your .com or .ai.

Do this tonight

  1. Check whether yourname.si is registered. If it is free, register it for a year and turn on auto-renew.
  2. Set it to a permanent 301 redirect to your main domain, path for path, over HTTPS. Test it with curl -I https://yourname.si.
  3. If it is taken, open it. Note whether it is a real Slovenian business, a for-sale page or a lookalike of your site. Only the last one needs action.
  4. Add "SI" next to "AI" on your homepage and your main "what is" page, so people who ask an assistant in the new wording still find you.
  5. Ask ChatGPT and Perplexity "which AI startups use .si domains" and save the answer. Run it again next month and compare who gets cited.

If you add a .si redirect, tag it so you can see whether anyone uses it. Clerion reports AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini as their own channel, so you can see the people who reach you through an SI answer instead of losing them in direct. Our guide to tracking ChatGPT traffic shows how.

Frequently asked questions

Which AI startups use .si domains?

As of October 2026, the only AI startup with a documented .si purchase is Recursive, which bought Recursive.si for $20,000 and redirects it to its .com, according to Dynadot. No major AI lab runs its product on a .si domain.

Does OpenAI or Anthropic own a .si domain?

We could not confirm it. On 9 October 2026, openai.si blocked our automated check, and anthropic.si showed a Slovenian-language software services site that does not say it is connected to Anthropic, the AI company.

How many .si domains were registered after the super intelligence rename?

Registry SI reported a 2,199% jump in .si purchases in September 2026, per TechCrunch. Netcraft counted 13,603 new .si names in the 24 hours to 1 October, with September running about 13 times August.

Are most new .si domains bought by speculators?

Much of the rush looks speculative. Netcraft found about 52% of .si names registered at Dynadot from 19 to 22 September listed for resale by 23 September, and Hostinger says only about 3% of its .si sales are clearly AI-related.

Should my AI startup move its website to a .si domain?

No. Google treats .si as a Slovenian country domain, unlike .ai, which it treats as generic. Register your .si name if it is free and 301 redirect it to your main .com or .ai site instead.

Did xAI or SpaceXAI switch to a .si domain?

No. Elon Musk said on 4 October 2026 that SpaceXAI will be renamed SpaceXSI, but TechSpot reported no .si domain, and the company website and X account had not changed when it wrote the story on 5 October.

Sources

ai startups use .si domains.si domainsuper intelligencedomainsai startupsdomain speculation

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