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Perplexity and Nvidia launch Portable Computer, a fully local AI agent

Perplexity and Nvidia launch Portable Computer, a fully local AI agent

New Capabilities

Agentic workloads run on the user's own GPU; local steps cost no tokens, and cloud escalation happens only on approval

August 25th, 2026: Perplexity and Nvidia launch Portable Computer

Overview

Updated Aug 27

Perplexity launched Portable Computer on Tuesday, a version of its agentic Computer platform that runs entirely on a user's own hardware. Local work costs no tokens, and nothing leaves the machine unless the user approves a specific cloud step.

Built with Nvidia, it runs on the DGX Spark desktop supercomputer and Linux machines with RTX GPUs of at least 24GB of memory; Windows support lands in September. First-run benchmarks show the local model scoring 59.6% on coding tasks for near-zero cost, with per-step cloud escalation lifting that to 73.0% at about $0.41 per task.

Why it matters

Enterprises can run AI agents on their own hardware, keeping data local and eliminating per-token charges for local work.

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Key Indicators

24 GB
Minimum GPU VRAM required
Any Nvidia RTX GPU with at least 24GB of memory, roughly an RTX 3090 or newer, can run Portable Computer.
$0
Token cost for work handled locally
Local processing consumes no billing credits; cloud escalation costs only when the user approves a specific step.
27B
Parameters in the local model
Runs Qwen 3.8 27B or PPLX 27B, Perplexity's post-trained Qwen variant; Nvidia's Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B) arrives soon.
$20
Monthly cost of Perplexity Pro
Required to download and run Portable Computer; the Max tier costs $200 per month.
15+
Cloud frontier models available for escalation
Users can approve escalation to one of 15+ frontier models for advanced reasoning, web access, or connected apps.
59.6%
Local model score on Terminal Bench 2.1
The on-device Qwen 27B scored 59.6% on this coding benchmark at near-zero cost; routing hard steps to a cloud advisor lifted it to 73.0% at about $0.41 per task.

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People Involved

Organizations Involved

Timeline

1 event Latest: August 25th, 2026 · 2 weeks ago
  1. Perplexity and Nvidia launch Portable Computer

    Latest Product launch

    Local-first AI agent runs on Nvidia DGX Spark and Linux machines with 24GB+ RTX GPUs. Zero token cost for local work; cloud escalation requires per-step approval.

Historical Context

2 moments from history that rhyme with this story — and how they unfolded.

August 1981

IBM PC 5150 (1981)

IBM released the 5150, bringing computing to offices and homes. For two decades, computing had run on centralized mainframes operated by specialists in climate-controlled rooms. The PC put that power on individual desks for roughly $1,565.

Then

PC clones flooded the market within a few years, and personal computing became the dominant paradigm.

Now

The shift from centralized to local computing created the software economy built around Microsoft and Intel, reshaping the entire industry.

Why this matters now

Portable Computer moves AI agents from cloud data centers to local hardware, a similar architectural reversal. Where the PC made computing local, this makes AI agent execution local, with the cloud reserved for hard cases.

February 2023

Meta releases Llama (2023)

Meta released Llama, an open-weight large language model that researchers could run on their own hardware. Before Llama, frontier models ran almost exclusively in cloud data centers with per-token API pricing.

Then

Open-weight models created an ecosystem of local inference, privacy-focused deployments, and cheap fine-tuning.

Now

The open-model movement established that useful models could run without cloud infrastructure, enabling the hardware requirements market Portable Computer now targets.

Why this matters now

Portable Computer builds directly on this foundation, using Qwen 3.8 27B and Perplexity's post-trained PPLX variant. Without open-weight models, local agent execution at this scale would not exist.

Sources

(10)