Cloud.ai sold for $600,000, setting a record for the highest .AI domain name transaction of the year

A well-known domain name investor James Booth recently posted on X: Cloud.ai sold for $600,000, becoming the highest .AI domain name transaction in public records so far in 2025.

However, judging from the screenshots he posted, the actual amount received was $500,000. The difference mainly came from the handling fee charged by the Domain Brokerage Service (DBS). The transaction was completed through the GoDaddy platform, and DBS usually charges a 20% service fee, which is especially common in anonymous transactions. Of course, in large transactions, the commission ratio is negotiable.

It is worth mentioning that this transaction is not only the largest .AI domain name transaction so far in 2025, but also the second most expensive .AI domain name in history, second only to the $700,000 transaction record set by You.ai in 2023. As for whether Cloud.ai can keep the annual crown, it depends on whether the market will explode again in the second half of the year.

(Current AI domain name public sales rankings, data source NameBio)

Why can Cloud.ai sell so high? The answer is actually very direct: strong keywords + suffixes are relevant to the topic.

"Cloud" has always been a high-frequency keyword in the field of science and technology. Long before the rise of cloud computing, it was widely used in cloud disks, cloud backups, remote services and other scenarios, and was regarded as a "universal root" for building technology brands.

After entering the AI ​​era, the meaning of Cloud has been further expanded to become a carrier of core concepts such as cloud training, cloud deployment, and AI Agent platform. It is no longer just a storage tool, but also the infrastructure for AI operations. With the .ai suffix adopted by the AI ​​industry by default, Cloud.ai has extremely high industry versatility and brand value, and the transaction price of $600,000 is a natural result.

This transaction also indirectly reflects that the popularity of the .AI domain name market is continuing to rise. On the one hand, small and medium-sized transactions ranging from thousands to tens of thousands of dollars continue to emerge, forming a stable liquidity; on the other hand, high-priced transaction cases such as Cloud.ai and You.ai are also constantly refreshing market cognition.

The trend behind this is very clear: more and more AI startups choose to use .ai domain names instead of traditional .com in the early stages of their branding. In addition to price factors, more importantly, it can directly convey industry positioning. For domain name investors, this is undoubtedly a clear signal: now is the critical window period to enter the .AI market.