India’s Agnikul Cosmos Enters Race for Data Centres in Space

Space startup Agnikul Cosmos and GPU cloud provider NeevCloud have signed a commercial agreement to deploy a space-based AI data centre in low Earth orbit (LEO) by the end of 2026. 

The mission will use Agnikul’s patented extendable upper-stage platform and launch an AI data centre module built by NeevCloud. It will also host real-time AI inference workloads in orbit. The project targets customers needing low-latency AI services in regions with limited ground infrastructure.

“This collaboration validates our assessment that enterprises are ready for commercially viable space infrastructure,” Moin SPM, Co-founder and COO of Agnikul Cosmos, said in a statement. He said flexible rental and data services support predictable scaling.

NeevCloud is among the first enterprises testing AI inference workloads on Agnikul’s extendable upper stages in LEO. The partnership creates a new launch and on-orbit services revenue stream for Agnikul.

Agnikul said it will use its patented convertible upper stages as hosting platforms for AI and data workloads. The company added that its launch systems and ground infrastructure now support repeat commercial missions.

“As with all rockets, with more launches, we naturally leave behind upper stages in orbit,” said Co-founder and CEO Srinath Ravichandran. “Our convertible upper-stage technology lets these stages stay active and functional,” he added.

Agnikul plans to operate modular space data centre modules using its long-lived orbital platforms. NeevCloud plans to scale its network to more than 600 orbital edge data centres over three years.

“We are not just building a data centre in space, we are building a new layer of orbital inferencing infrastructure,” said Narendra Sen, Founder and CEO of NeevCloud. He said the partnership aims to decouple AI from the limits of terrestrial infrastructure.