Neuralix delivers a military-specific foundation model and sovereign GenAI platform within the Indian Army’s secure, air-gapped environment.
India’s next generation of military AI must be sovereign by design. Neuralix has demonstrated that this capability can be built from the ground up, securely and at mission speed.”— Maj Gen Ravi Murugan, PVSM, AVSM, Senior Adviser, Neuralix AINEW DELHI, INDIA, September 2, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Neuralix AI Private Limited has created a sovereign AI foundation model built entirely from scratch with military applications in mind, along with a unified Generative AI platform that functions exclusively within the Indian Army’s protected digital infrastructure. This accomplishment represents a major milestone in sovereign defence artificial intelligence. Instead of modifying a general-purpose or open-source model for military use, Neuralix constructed a foundation model centered on defence needs, featuring its own architecture and model weights, plus a training and development process tailored to the military domain.
The model was designed to comprehend defence terminology, military concepts, doctrine, strategy, intricate Army documents, and domain-specific knowledge, allowing it to produce structured insights for authorized military personnel. Its knowledge and retrieval architecture was also structured around military information needs rather than merely applying standard retrieval-augmented generation to a generic language model. The foundation model employs a Mixture-of-Experts architecture and was developed within the Indian Army environment, ensuring sensitive data remains under Army control during both development and operation. Neuralix’s work is carried out under the Indian Army’s AI-as-a-Service with infrastructure setup challenge within the iDEX ADITI 2.0 programme. Neuralix was chosen as the technology developer after a competitive process involving several participants. The Directorate General of Information Systems (DGIS) acts as the Indian Army’s steering and user agency, Neuralix as the technology developer, and the Defence Innovation Organisation as the contracting agency under iDEX ADITI 2.0.
Alongside the foundation model, Neuralix has built EKAM, a unified sovereign military Generative AI platform intended to operate entirely within the Indian Army’s digital network and compute environment. EKAM was launched by the Hon’ble Raksha Mantri during the Chanakya Defence Dialogue and offers a secure platform capable of hosting multiple AI models, specialized services, and military use cases. EKAM functions within an air-gapped environment, isolated from the public internet and external cloud services. It can support the military foundation model, as well as specialized Small Language Models developed for specific Army requirements, and other AI capabilities that may be added over time. Together, the platform and foundation model establish sovereignty across three critical layers: the model, the data, and the infrastructure. Model sovereignty means the architecture, weights, and evolution of the AI system can remain under controlled custody rather than relying on an external commercial AI provider. Data sovereignty ensures that confidential Army information stays within the Army environment. Infrastructure sovereignty allows the complete system to operate on Army-controlled compute and networks without dependence on public cloud infrastructure or external APIs.
Building modern AI within such an environment posed a substantial engineering challenge. Most contemporary AI development assumes constant access to software repositories, model hubs, external libraries, APIs, and cloud services. Within an air-gapped defence network, these dependencies cannot be accessed on demand. Neuralix engineers had to securely bring required dependencies into the environment, modify components where needed, and, in some cases, develop or adapt software so that the entire AI stack could operate efficiently without external connectivity. Neuralix employed a forward-deployed engineering approach throughout the programme, with its technical team working within the environment provided by DGIS and developing the technology closely around Army requirements.
This approach allowed the technology to be built around the user while confidential Army data remained with the user. Sensitive information did not need to be transferred to an external AI environment for Neuralix to develop, test, and refine the system. In just over a year, Neuralix has developed both a unified sovereign military GenAI platform and a ground-up military foundation model within a highly secure and restrictive defence environment. The two capabilities represent distinct but complementary achievements. EKAM provides the sovereign platform and infrastructure layer, while the military foundation model delivers an intelligence layer designed specifically around defence knowledge and military requirements.
Over time, this architecture could provide the foundation for a broader military AI ecosystem, potentially supporting specialized military agents, decision-support systems, operational software, edge-deployed AI capabilities, and other secure applications developed around future Army requirements. Any extension into additional operational or military systems would be subject to the appropriate development, evaluation, and deployment processes. For Neuralix, the programme demonstrates that an Indian technology company can build a military-specific foundation model from the ground up, create a complete sovereign GenAI platform around it, and make the full technology stack operate within an air-gapped defence environment while keeping sensitive military data under Army control.
As governments around the world evaluate how artificial intelligence should be deployed within defence and other critical national infrastructure, control over models, data, and infrastructure is becoming increasingly important. Neuralix’s work with the Indian Army demonstrates one approach to meeting those requirements: building the model for the mission, building the technology around the user, and keeping sovereignty at the foundation of the entire AI stack.
Tarang Singh
Neuralix AI Pvt. Ltd.
info@neuralix.ai
