Bharti Airtel plans to build 56 edge data centres in the next 18 to 24 months, with executive vice chairman Gopal Vittal calling for major infrastructure investment to differentiate over the next 2 to 3 decades. He also said India’s tariff architecture is “broken,” where higher-income users pay too little and lower-income users pay too much. Airtel’s strategy is backed by rising capex, fibre expansion, and scaling its non-banking financial services, including a planned Rs 20,000 crore investment.
US-Indian space company Pixxel is partnering with Bengaluru AI startup Sarvam to build “Pathfinder,” an orbital data-centre satellite. Pixxel will design, build, launch and operate it, while Sarvam’s full-stack language models will train and run inference in orbit on data-centre-class GPUs. The aim: process hyperspectral imagery and generate insights in real time, cutting delays and reducing dependence on Earth-based cloud infrastructure.
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Big tech and startups are building orbital data centers to run AI-driven processing in space, using an edge-computing model that reduces latency and energy consumption. Instead of sending everything down to Earth, satellites can prioritize high-value data and transmit it selectively, improving autonomy and enabling faster insights for defense and climate monitoring.
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