CHENNAI: Chennai-based AgniKul Cosmos Private Ltd on Thursday said it has partnered with a cloud company to host an AI data centre soon. With this collaboration, the space tech company has entered into the league of companies such as SpaceX, Google and Axiom, among others.
Srinath Ravichandran, co-founder and CEO of AgniKul Cosmos, told TNIE, “The patented upper stage of the rocket—Agnibaan—can be doubled up as a platform. This is a technology we have developed. We have found a new class of customers for whom we will be able to host a data server module in space.”
This is the first time that any Indian company is working on providing a data centre in orbit, and also the first time a company is offering patented technology of having an extendable upper stage of its rocket act as a satellite bus hosting the data centre. As per the deal, AgniKul will launch an orbit-based AI data centre module developed by NeevCloud's AI SuperCloud platform into space. NeevCloud will deploy its space-based AI data centre and will run real-time AI inference applications on this patented platform designed and developed by AgniKul.
This collaboration opens up a new revenue stream for Agnikul through launch and on-orbit services, removing the need for customers to design or deploy satellites.
From a business perspective, this opens a new opportunity for AgniKul. Ravichandran further informed TNIE, “Typically, we thought that majority of our customers would be from imaging and communications side. But now, we can create a new class of customers as we can lend our upper stage of the vehicle to store data.”
Without revealing the total transaction details, Ravichandran further added that the contract will be multi-mission and multi-year, extending to three to four years.
He said the company will prototype proof of concept this year and actual deployment of the data centre module will happen in mid-2027.
NeevCloud is among the first enterprises testing AI inference and cloud workloads on AgniKul’s patented extendable upper-stage platforms in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Agnikul is targeting a fleet of assets in orbit with AI stacks that form modular Space Data Center Modules (SDCMs). The alliance acts as a key enabler block for NeevCloud AI Supercloud scaling roadmap, allowing it to expand its network to 600+ orbital edge data centres over the next three years.
"We are not just building a data center in space, we are building an entirely new layer of orbital inferencing infrastructure," said Narendra Sen, Founder & CEO of NeevCloud. "To truly democratize AI, we must decouple it from terrestrial limitations. By partnering with Agnikul, we are taking our AI SuperCloud to the ultimate orbit edge - space. This partnership ensures access to the AI infrastructure that powers the next decade of global intelligence, low-latency AI not just to our cities, but to every village and border post, AI for all,” he added.