Verisign says it has applied for .pki

Verisign said on 5 October 2026 that it has applied for .pki in ICANN’s 2026 round. The statement closes a company blog post, published under the name of founder and chief executive Jim Bidzos, that launches Verisign Informed:

“Finally, Verisign has applied for the .pki gTLD in the next round of ICANN’s new gTLD program. We see .pki as a potentially useful gTLD within PKI usage scenarios.”

IANA’s root zone database lists VeriSign Global Registry Services as the sponsoring organisation for .com.

The product the string sits beside

The post describes Verisign Informed as a certificate-status service. Before a system relies on a certificate, it can ask Verisign whether that certificate is still valid, and receives a signed answer through the Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP). The company frames the problem as “stale trust”: decisions made on validity information that can be “hours – or days – out of date”.

The service opened in limited beta on 5 October. The post says Verisign plans to make it generally available in the first half of 2027.

The post does not say how .pki would be used with the service, or who could register names in it.

What remains unconfirmed

The post names one string. It does not say whether .pki was filed as a primary or a replacement string, and it does not say whether Verisign filed any other application. No other public claimant for .pki was found in the sources reviewed. ICANN’s official publication can confirm the applicant list for the string.