India aims for the stars with orbital datacentres

With inferencing expected to account for the majority of artificial intelligence (AI) workloads and the lower tolerance for latency, terrestrial datacentre infrastructure in India is facing severe constraints. That’s on top of data sovereignty requirements across sectors such as defence, manufacturing, maritime and healthcare. Orbital datacentres are emerging as a radical, yet increasingly viable, alternative to ground datacentres – even as establishing a presence in space comes with its own unique set of pros and cons. Consider the partnership between sovereign AI cloud infrastructure company NeevCloud and spacetech startup Agnikul Cosmos, announced in February 2026. The two firms have joined forces to launch India’s first indigenous AI-powered datacentre in space, with a pilot expected before the end of 2026. Other space startups, such as TakeMe2Space, are also looking to build orbital datacentres to run AI models directly on satellites. Reports suggest that the Department of Space (DoS) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) are exploring the feasibility of placing physical datacentres in orbit to process and store satellite and communications data. But is this just another manifestation of edge computing, or something much bigger? Why put datacentres in space? For Narendra Sen, founder and CEO of NeevCloud, the case for orbital datacentres boils down to three irreplaceable advantages: energy, latency and sovereignty. “In space, you have unlimited access to solar power, and you can simply radiate excess heat into space,” said Sen. “None of the water and energy problems that plague terrestrial facilities exist up there. That is the clearest contrast with land-based datacentres, which are today shifting from carrier-neutral to power-neutral and carbon-neutral models because power has become the primary bottleneck.” Under the new partnership, Agnikul will provide the launch vehicle and orbital hosting platform using its extendable upper-stage rocket architecture, alleviating the need to build a dedicated...