Neuralix delivers a military-specific foundation model and sovereign GenAI platform within the Indian Army’s secure, air-gapped environment.

NEW DELHI, INDIA, September 2, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Neuralix AI Private Limited has developed a sovereign AI foundation model built ground-up specifically for military use, alongside a unified Generative AI platform operating entirely within the Indian Army’s secure digital environment. The achievement marks a significant milestone in sovereign defence artificial intelligence. Rather than adapting a general-purpose or open model for a military application, Neuralix has developed a foundation model specifically around defence requirements, with its own architecture and model weights and a training and development process designed for the military domain.

The model has been developed to understand defence terminology, military concepts, doctrine, strategy, complex Army documents and domain-specific knowledge, enabling it to generate structured insights for authorized military users. Its knowledge and retrieval architecture has also been designed around military information requirements rather than simply applying conventional retrieval-augmented generation to a generic language model. The foundation model uses a Mixture-of-Experts architecture and has been developed within the Indian Army environment, allowing sensitive data to remain under Army control throughout development and operation. Neuralix’s work is being carried out under the Indian Army’s AI-as-a-Service with infrastructure setup challenge under the iDEX ADITI 2.0 programme. Neuralix emerged as the selected technology developer following a competitive process involving multiple contenders. The Directorate General of Information Systems, or DGIS, serves 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 developed EKAM, a unified sovereign military Generative AI platform designed 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 provides a secure platform capable of hosting multiple AI models, specialized services and military use cases. EKAM operates within an air-gapped environment, isolated from the public internet and external cloud services. It can support the military foundation model as well as specialised 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 within controlled custody rather than depending on an external commercial AI provider. Data sovereignty ensures that confidential Army information remains 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.

Creating modern AI within such an environment presented 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, those dependencies cannot simply be accessed on demand. Neuralix engineers had to securely bring required dependencies into the environment, modify components where necessary and, in certain cases, develop or adapt software specifically so that the complete AI stack could operate efficiently without external connectivity. Neuralix used 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 in order 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 provides 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 specialised 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 bringing those requirements together: 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