In brief
Donald Trump’s recent call to rename artificial intelligence as 'Super Intelligence' has triggered an unprecedented surge in domain registrations in Slovenia. According to the country’s official registry, 44,000 .si web addresses were registered in September, a jump of over 2,100% from the previous month. The surge coincides with Trump’s United Nations speech where he urged the use of SI instead of AI. While speculation lingers that some investors are buying domains to sell later, the registry remains cautious about attributing the whole rise to the president’s comments.
US President Donald Trump has called for the term artificial intelligence to be replaced with the initialism SI, standing for “Super Intelligence.” The rename was announced during a speech at the United Nations General Assembly on 11 September and quickly sparked a record‑breaking rush of domain registrations in Slovenia.
Slovenia’s official national registry, Register.si, reported that 44,000 web addresses with the .si suffix were registered in September, compared with fewer than 2,000 in August – a surge of more than 2,100%. One day – 30 September – saw 11,000 new registrations in a single day.
Klara Herman, a spokeswoman for Register.si, said such activity had never been seen in the past 12 months and was “very clearly” linked to the term’s newfound popularity. She also noted that the increase could partly reflect sellers securing domain names in advance to sell for profit at a later stage.
Trump’s executive order instructing government agencies to adopt the terminology “SI” in official correspondence, and to stop using “AI,” has given the rebrand a sense of legitimacy – even though one screenshot of the order revealed that the word “United States” was misspelled under Trump’s signature.
The spike in registrations reflects a broader trend of speculators buying domains with the hope of selling them later at a higher price, a practice that has produced notable profits in the past – for example, the 1997 purchase of men.com which sold for $1.32 million a decade later.
While the ongoing trend remains to be fully understood, the unanticipated reaction to Trump's terminology shows how language changes at the highest levels can ripple into global digital markets. For updates on this and related tech stories, sign up for our Tech Decoded newsletter.
