We're pleased to announce the addition of cosmos.gl to the OpenJS Foundation as an incubating project! cosmos.gl is a GPU-accelerated force-directed graph layout and rendering engine that empowers developers, researchers, and analysts to interact with massive, complex datasets—right in the browser.

Created by Nikita Rokotyan and currently maintained by Nikita and Olya Stukova, cosmos.gl enables scalable and performant visualization of over one million nodes and links, offering unprecedented capabilities in real-time graph rendering.

Why cosmos.gl?

“cosmos.gl is a framework to help you work with massive graphs directly in the browser,” says Nikita Rokotyan, cosmos.gl creator. “If you've ever tried to visualize large-scale networks or embeddings—whether for biotech, finance, or AI—you’ve likely hit performance walls. cosmos.gl breaks through those limits.”

The need for such a tool is rapidly increasing, especially with the growth of machine learning, explainable AI, and interactive web-based data analysis. cosmos.gl was created to solve real-world bottlenecks and open new possibilities in exploratory data visualization.

A Few Core Use Cases:

1. Biotech and Drug Discovery – cosmos.gl can visualize massive biological networks, including relationships between genes, proteins, and diseases. Researchers from Stanford, Harvard and CDC, among others, are already leveraging cosmos.gl to map protein similarity networks and accelerate drug discovery.
2. Financial Transactions – Fraud detection, anti-money laundering investigations, and compliance monitoring rely on understanding transaction networks. cosmos.gl helps engineers navigate and interpret these complex structures.
3. Generative Model Data & AI – cosmos.gl is increasingly used to visualize large datasets generated by and for AI models, including embeddings and synthetic datasets used to train or validate generative AI tools.

"We’re excited to welcome cosmos.gl to the OpenJS Foundation community," said Joe Sepi, Co-Chair of the OpenJS Cross Project Council. "This project brings real innovation to the data visualization space, and it’s incredibly well aligned with our mission to support open source JavaScript technologies that are fast, scalable, and sustainable."

“There’s a lot of cool work happening in our OpenJS Open Visualization Collaboration Space to advance visualization libraries based on JavaScript and WebGL,” says Robin Bender Ginn, executive director of the OpenJS Foundation. “cosmos.gl is a fantastic addition to OpenJS and all those working on important use cases for large scale data sets and AI.”

Built for the Web

cosmos.gl is written in JavaScript and optimized to run in web-based environments with GPU acceleration. This makes it ideal for integration with modern web stacks, dashboards, and even low-latency, interactive simulations. It’s an ideal companion for data scientists, full-stack engineers, and visualization experts working on complex systems.

"cosmos.gl demonstrates how far JavaScript and GPU acceleration in the browser have come," said Ib Green, longtime OpenJS contributor and advisor. "cosmos.gl is not just a rendering engine—it’s the foundation of an ecosystem for scalable, interactive graph visualization."

From Pet Project to Foundation

cosmos.gl began as a personal side project and has grown organically into an essential tool for visualizing complex data. By joining the OpenJS Foundation, cosmos.gl gains access to a broader network of contributors, governance support, and visibility through the Foundation’s vibrant community.

"We’re seeing cosmos.gl evolve into something that’s far bigger than we originally imagined," said Nikita Rokotyan. "With OpenJS Foundation’s support, we’re excited to grow the ecosystem, expand our user base, and improve the tooling for massive graph analysis in the browser."

What’s Next?

cosmos.gl is entering the Incubation Phase at OpenJS, with the goal of graduating to an At-Large Project. Over the coming months, the team will continue to:

• Build out governance and contributor documentation
• Expand the examples and use case library
• Launch a project website and showcase gallery
• Foster community adoption and maintain transparency

In the meantime, explore cosmos.gl and get involved:

• GitHub: https://github.com/cosmosgl/graph
• Try the live demo: cosmosgl.github.io/graph

cosmos.gl is already transforming the way we visualize complex data. We can’t wait to see what you build with it. Welcome to the family, cosmos.gl!