Bengaluru: India's space regulator and promoter has picked six private space companies for seed grants of up to ₹1 crore each to build artificial intelligence into spacecraft and their operations.
The Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) selected the six under its AI INSPIRED programme, announced in February 2026 under the Seed Fund Scheme. The total outlay is up to ₹6 crore, aimed at startups and micro and small enterprises.
The projects take on some of the hardest problems in spaceflight: precision landing, space situational awareness, debris detection, satellite servicing and refuelling, automated target recognition and spacecraft autonomy.
Agnikul Cosmos will build an edge AI-enabled, vision-based terminal navigation module to sharpen navigation in the final stages of a landing. Digantara has been selected for its Agentic RSO Evaluation Suite, or ARES. EON Space Labs will develop an intelligent optical payload using field-programmable gate array-based edge AI for real-time space situational awareness and debris detection.
OrbitAid Aerospace will work on machine-learning-assisted pose estimation for on-orbit servicing and refuelling, which lets a spacecraft work out its relative position and orientation while approaching, docking with or servicing another satellite. Omnipresent Robot Technologies will take up automated target recognition with applications in defence and docking. TakeMeToSpace will modernise attitude determination and control systems with AI so that spacecraft can adapt on their own.
Two more entities, Foucault Private Limited and AkashaVeda Technologies, have been picked for mentorship and technical support rather than seed funds. Foucault is building an AI and machine-learning-based autonomous collision avoidance system, and AkashaVeda is working on AI-driven mission management across onboard and ground operations. Both will get access to IN-SPACe and ISRO facilities to validate their technology and will be considered for technology transfer from the Department of Space.
The logic is straightforward. As satellite constellations multiply and low-earth orbit gets more crowded, decisions that once waited for ground control increasingly have to be made on board, in real time. Edge AI for navigation, debris tracking and autonomous docking is turning from an add-on into core capability.
IN-SPACe has said it wants to expand India's space economy from $8.4 billion to $44 billion, with private participation doing much of the heavy lifting. Seed money of ₹1 crore does not build a satellite, but it does buy a startup the test time and the ISRO access that are harder to find than cash.