ESG

Rapid.Space does not publish an annual ESG report in the way large listed companies do, and we have no intention of producing one for appearances' sake. Our environmental, social and governance commitments are not policies added as an afterthought: they are the direct consequence of technological and economic choices made from the very beginning. This document outlines the main ones, with their sources.

A cloud designed to consume less

Since 2019, our cloud servers have been hosted at Hydro66 in Sweden, a datacenter powered exclusively by hydroelectric energy. The machines we deploy there are ITRenew Sesame recertified servers, compliant with the Open Compute Project standard: high-performance hardware sourced from the circular economy, rather than new equipment. The result is a reduction in CO₂ emissions of up to 87% compared to the average European cloud provider [RD].

This approach is not a recent initiative: the circular economy has been one of the three founding pillars of Rapid.Space since its beta launch in October 2018, alongside Open Hardware and Free Software. Using recertified hardware is our default model, not an option [RD].

Our radio equipment follows the same logic. The Open Radio Station, our autonomous 4G/5G base station, consumes only 32 W and can run entirely on solar energy and batteries, with no need for a fuel-powered generator. In the tropical and rural areas where we deploy, this is a design constraint, not a marketing argument [RD].

Bridging the digital divide as a core purpose

The social issue at the heart of our business is connectivity. Around 20% of the world's population still has no access to the Internet, not because the technology is unavailable, but because the economics of traditional operators mechanically exclude low-income areas from their coverage plans. Once average revenue per user drops below €2-4 per month, no mainstream player invests.

Rapid.Space designed the ORS precisely to change that equation. Combined with a satellite connection such as Starlink, our base station can cover an entire village for a total cost of under €100 per month, serving up to 512 active users, and remain viable with an average revenue per user of as little as €1. Commercial deployments already exist in Brazil, the Philippines and Southeast Asia [RD].

Beyond raw connectivity, the documented impact in these communities includes Internet access for teachers, farmers and fishermen in areas that previously had no coverage at all [RD]. Through our partnership with Viettel, Vietnam's largest telecom operator, we have also initiated a technology transfer enabling local manufacturing of radio equipment, as part of a French-Vietnamese cooperation in science and technology [RD].

Governance built on transparency and independence

Rapid.Space is a joint venture between Nexedi and Amarisoft. Nexedi, our parent company, has been profitable since its founding in 2001, with no external investors. This financial independence is not a minor detail: it ensures that our technological and ethical choices are not subject to short-term pressure of any kind [RD].

On transparency and our model are radical. The entire source code is public, the hardware is reproducible, and our operational processes are documented in such a way that any customer can replicate our infrastructure autonomously. We call this the Fully Open model. It is what allows operators like Viettel to take genuine ownership of the technology [RD].

Our architecture is also zero-knowledge, designed to resist interference from third-party governments regardless of their geographic origin. In a world where digital sovereignty is becoming a central concern for both companies and states, this is a structural guarantee that the major cloud players are simply not in a position to offer [RD].

Diversity

Our engineering team is based across France, several European countries, Asia and South America. This geographic diversity is longstanding and structural [RD]. We do not currently publish data on internal gender parity or have a formalised DEI policy, and this is an area we recognise as one for improvement.

Our most concrete commitment to inclusion remains our mission itself: making high-performance telecommunications infrastructure accessible to the populations and territories that the market has so far chosen to ignore.