Donuts Inc. was a

domain name registrar A domain name registrar is a company, person, or office that manages the reservation of Internet domain names. A domain name registrar must be accredited by a generic top-level domain (gTLD) Domain name registry, registry or a country code top-l ...

and registry providing paid domain names under 270 new

generic top-level domain Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) are one of the categories of top-level domains (TLDs) maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for use in the Domain Name System of the Internet. A top-level domain is the last level of ev ...

s (gTLDs), as made possible by

ICANN The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ) is a global multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization headquartered in the United States responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several dat ...

's gTLD expansion program, as well as 173 other TLDs including

.au .au is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Australia. It was created on 5March 1986. Domain name policy is managed by .au Domain Administration (auDA). As of July 2018, the registry is operated by Afilias. History The dom ...

(

ccTLD A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, sovereign state, or dependent territory identified with a country code. All ASCII ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all tw ...

) and .org (

gTLD Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) are one of the categories of top-level domains (TLDs) maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for use in the Domain Name System of the Internet. A top-level domain is the last level of ev ...

managed by the

Public Interest Registry Public Interest Registry is a not-for-profit based in Reston, Virginia, created by the Internet Society in 2002 to manage the .org, .ORG top-level domain. It took over operation of .ORG in January 2003 and launched the .NGO and .ONG top-level doma ...

), through its own registry status (for example, managing the .social

) and contracts between its subsidiaries and other registries. It was co-founded in 2010 by Paul Stahura, Jonathon Nevett, Richard Tindal, and Daniel Schindler. The company's headquarters are located in Bellevue, Washington. In July 2017, Donuts acquired Rightside, along with domain registrar

Name.com Name.com is an ICANN accredited domain name registrar and web hosting company based in Denver, Colorado. Since the company was founded in 2003, it has since grown to become one of the leading domain registrars in the world, offering close to 600 T ...

. On August 11, 2018, Donuts entered into an agreement to be acquired by

private equity firm A private equity firm or private equity company (often described as a financial sponsor) is an investment management company that provides financial backing and makes investments in the private equity of a Startup company, startup or of an existin ...

Abry Partners. In December 2020, Donuts acquired the registry division of

Afilias Afilias, Inc. was a US corporation that was the registry operator of the .info, .mobi and .pro top-level domain, service provider for registry operators of .org, .ngo, .lgbt, .asia, .aero, and a provider of domain name registry services f ...

, Inc., a registry, registrar and mobile software developer headquartered outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In January 2021, Ethos Capital acquired Donuts after their failed bid to gain control over the .org internet domain. In 2022, Afilias and Donuts Inc were merged under Identity Digital.

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* {{Business-org-stub Internet technology companies of the United States American companies established in 2010 Domain name registrars Privately held companies based in Washington (state) 2010 establishments in Washington (state)