The Purest Signal in Our Data
Every other TLD carries legacy baggage — existing sites built years ago on whatever was available. The .ai TLD is different. These domains were registered intentionally by AI companies, most of them in the last 2-3 years. Minimal legacy inertia. At 3,658 detections — 3x our earlier sample — this finding is confirmed at scale.
The .dev Parallel
.dev — the TLD developers buy for personal projects — is 54% Next.js and 12% Astro. When developers choose for themselves, not for clients, they choose modern. The .ai and .dev TLDs together paint the clearest picture of what builders prefer when unconstrained by legacy.
Why This Matters
The companies building AI chose Next.js over WordPress at 45% to 42%. The gap narrowed as the sample grew from 1K to 3.6K — WordPress is gaining .ai registrations too — but Next.js still leads. They're choosing frameworks that produce clean, structured, machine-parseable output. The .ai TLD is the closest thing to a controlled experiment: mostly new domains, intentional choices, no procurement defaults.
