New report and video investigation reveal a $15 billion market nobody's heard of - now surging as AI agents devour the Internet's scarcest resource.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA / ACCESS Newswire / May 26, 2026 / Every device on the internet - every phone, every server, every AI chatbot - needs a digital address to communicate. There are only 4.3 billion of them. They ran out 15 years ago. And right now, demand is surging faster than at any point in the past decade.
AI agents appear to be responsible. Every autonomous AI system operating on the internet requires its own IPv4 address - and with the agentic AI boom accelerating, the market for these scarce digital assets has shifted dramatically. Leading brokers report selling more large address blocks in six weeks than in the prior twelve months. Prices are climbing. Backlogs are growing. And the US government has earmarked $22 billion in broadband infrastructure funding that industry participants expect to tighten supply even further.
Yet until now, no comprehensive public data has existed on this market.
Today, Escrow.com - the world's largest online escrow provider - publishes the inaugural Escrow.com IPv4 Investment Index: a quarterly report based on proprietary transaction data spanning $536 million in completed deals across 82 countries. Alongside the report, Escrow.com is releasing a video investigation featuring interviews filmed inside one of the southern hemisphere's largest data centres, with one of the world's leading IPv4 brokers, and with holders who discovered they were sitting on forgotten internet assets worth millions.
Key Findings
Q1 2026 average deal size surged 66% year-over-year as demand for large blocks accelerated
522,000 IP addresses changed hands through Escrow.com in Q1 2026 alone - on pace for the busiest year since 2020
The largest single IPv4 transaction in Escrow.com history - $43.1 million - was completed in Q3 2024
AWS holds an estimated 191 million IPv4 addresses worth approximately $6.7 billion - and charges customers up to $1 billion annually for access
The official waiting list for new address allocations is 12 - 20 months. Maximum allocation: just 1,024 addresses
Leading brokers predict prices will double by year-end
Why This Data Matters
IPv4 addresses are traded in a secondary market estimated at $15 billion over the past eight years - yet the market has operated with almost no public transparency. Prices, volumes, and geographic flows have been invisible to everyone outside a small circle of specialist brokers. The IPv4 Investment Index is the first regular publication to open this market to scrutiny, using verified transaction data from the platform that settles many of the world's highest-value IPv4 transfers.
"Most people have not heard of IPv4 addresses, but the entire world runs on them - whether it's AI, cloud, your mobile phone, telco infrastructure, or your home internet connection," said Matt Barrie, Chief Executive of Escrow.com. "We're launching this index to give a market of this scale the transparency it deserves."
The Indiana Joneses of the Internet
With no new IPv4 addresses being created, specialist brokers scour more than 60 countries to track down dormant address blocks - tracing ownership through decades of corporate history, dissolved companies, and forgotten allocations from the 1980s.
"These brokers are like the Indiana Joneses of the internet," said Barrie. "They're trekking to far-flung corners of the world - former Soviet republics, defunct universities, and retired engineers' estates - to find addresses that were allocated decades ago and have been sitting unused ever since."
The report and video feature Jake Brander, President of Brander Group - one of the world's leading IPv4 brokerages - who describes the market's recent shift.
"Agentic AI kind of blew up the whole industry," Brander said. "Overnight, we just had an explosion of customers coming in. We are currently backlogged."
Brander predicts /16 blocks - currently trading at $10 - 13 per IP - will reach $20 per IP by year-end, with midsize blocks climbing to $20 - 30. His firm has facilitated individual engagements exceeding $120 million.
The BEAD Factor
The US government's $22 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program - designed to expand rural internet access through regional ISPs - has yet to release its funds. When it does, industry participants expect a further tightening of IPv4 supply.
"We've already had an explosion leading into this other explosion that's going to occur," Brander said.
The Report and Video
The full IPv4 Investment Index is available at https://www.escrow.com/ipv4/ipv4-investment-index-reports
The accompanying video investigation - filmed inside NextDC's data centre in Sydney, with interviews featuring IPv4 brokers, data centre operators, address holders, and the Escrow.com CEO - is also viewable at https://www.escrow.com/ipv4
About Escrow.com
Winner of the BBB Torch Award for Ethics for Silicon Valley, San Francisco and the Bay Area, Escrow.com is the world's largest online escrow provider. Founded in 1999 by Fidelity National Financial, today over US$8 billion in transactions have been secured from over 3 million customers. Escrow.com is the world's number one platform for domain name transactions - it also facilitates large-value transactions for vehicles, property, electronics, jewellery, general merchandise and other categories of products, using the most secure payment method from a counterparty risk perspective - safeguarding both buyer and seller. All funds transacted using escrow are kept in trust.
The company is a division of Freelancer Limited (ASX:FLN)(OTCQX:FRLCY). Escrow.com's headquarters is in San Francisco, California, in the United States.
For more information, contact:
Brent O'Halloran - Director of Communications
bohalloran@escrow.com | +1 650 442 3334
SOURCE: Escrow.com
View the original press release on ACCESS Newswire:
https://www.accessnewswire.com/newsroom/en/business-and-professional-services/new-report-finds-ai-agents-are-devouring-the-internets-scarce-ad-1170287
