This tiny island is getting rich from AI

PLUS: xAI sues an engineer over stolen secrets and the collapse of a top AI company

Author

Jelani Abdus-Salaam
September 01, 2025

In partnership with

Welcome back, AI’ers!

Here’s What’s On The Menu For Today

  • How Anguilla is making millions from .ai domains

  • xAI sues an engineer for allegedly stealing trade secrets

  • Latam-GPT: A new open-source AI for the region

  • The intensifying battle for top AI talent and IP

AI ON MY MIND

Happy Monday,

A small Caribbean island is tapping into the AI gold rush in an unexpected way. Anguilla is bringing in tens of millions of dollars simply by owning the coveted .ai country-code domain name.

This digital real estate has now become a core part of the island's economy, providing a massive financial windfall. It raises the question of what other overlooked digital assets might hold immense value in the age of AI.

By the way, I've been getting questions about how AI works in practice, so I'm launching a separate newsletter that dives deeper into real business applications and practical advice. [Click here if you're interested].

-Jelani Fuel (Co-founder of Best of AI)

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TODAY’S TOP STORIES

Anguilla's AI Windfall

The Recap:

The small Caribbean island of Anguilla is capitalizing on the AI boom, earning tens of millions of dollars by selling its country-code domain name: .ai. This digital windfall is now a cornerstone of the island's economy.

Unpacked:

  • In 2024 alone, the island earned $39 million from domain sales, which accounted for nearly a quarter of its total government revenue.

  • Demand is surging, with premium domains like you.ai fetching a reported $700,000 as the total number of .ai registrations soars past 850,000.

  • Anguilla is using the income to diversify its hurricane-vulnerable economy and has partnered with a US firm to securely manage the domain registry off-island.

Bottom line:

This is a powerful example of how digital assets can create massive, unexpected value in the AI era. Anguilla's story shows that sometimes the most valuable real estate isn't physical at all.

xAI Sues Former Engineer in Escalating AI Talent War

The Recap: Elon Musk's xAI is suing a former engineer for allegedly stealing valuable trade secrets related to its Grok model before resigning to join competitor OpenAI. The lawsuit reveals the increasingly intense battle for talent and technology in the AI space.

Unpacked:

  • The engineer, Xuechen Li, allegedly downloaded core files related to Grok and later admitted to copying the confidential data to personal devices.

  • Before resigning, Li reportedly sold millions in xAI equity and was preparing to start a new role at rival lab OpenAI.

  • xAI is seeking a court injunction to prevent Li from taking a position at OpenAI or any other competitor to protect its proprietary technology.

Bottom line: This legal action shows how aggressively AI companies are now moving to protect their core innovations from competitors. As the AI arms race continues, expect to see more high-stakes disputes over intellectual property and top-tier talent.

MY FAVORITE AI TOOLS

Relevance is my favorite AI tool right now (even more so than N8N).

Here’s why:

It’s an AI agent building tool that doesn’t require you to build out the logic using nodes. Instead, you use natural language to build out these agents. But the best thing imo is that you can build AI Agent teams.

Like agents talking to each other completing a goal until its done. It’s nuts. No other tool on the market is doing this. You have to check it out.

(Try it out →Link)

👾 AI Tools We Use Everyday

➡️ N8N for AI Agents - Literally use this everyday to write this newsletter (link)

➡️ Axiom AI - AI Browser automation to scrape anything on the web (link)

➡️ GummySearch - AI Reddit research (link)

Tools are sourced from our database and are not sponsored or affiliated.

MORE STORIES

LatAm's Open-Source AI

The Recap: Chile's National Center for Artificial Intelligence (CENIA) is building Latam-GPT, a collaborative, open-source AI. The project aims to create a foundational model trained specifically on Latin American languages and cultural contexts.

Unpacked:

  • It’s being built with serious firepower, boasting 50 billion parameters and running on a supercomputer cluster equipped with state-of-the-art NVIDIA H200 GPUs.

  • The model is trained on a massive, regionally-focused dataset of over eight terabytes of text, ensuring it deeply understands the unique dialects and history of Latin America.

  • The project’s vision is to create a foundational tool for the region, enabling local organizations to build specialized models for sectors like education, agriculture, and healthcare.

Bottom line: This initiative represents a significant push for technological independence, positioning Latin America as a creator, not just a consumer, of core AI technology. The focus on regional context ensures the development of AI applications that are truly relevant to its communities.

OTHER NEWS YOU MAY LIKE

OpenAI benchmarked its new Tau² framework, a benchmark designed to evaluate how well AI agents perform in realistic, tool-driven scenarios across different business domains like airlines and retail.

Google showcased NotebookLM, an AI-powered tool from Google Labs designed to help writers and researchers synthesize complex information, generate summaries, and find connections across uploaded documents.

Researchers demonstrated that an AI-powered stethoscope can detect three major heart conditions in just 15 seconds, a breakthrough that could transform early diagnosis in primary care.ce, using "ethical AI" to enhance the 1939 classic for its 16K screen and add 4D effects.

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THAT’S IT FOR TODAY

Until next time, stay safe.

-Best of AI Team

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