Most AI assistants require you to send your questions, files and other data to somebody else’s servers. Perplexity’s new Portable Computer turns that arrangement around by running the entire AI system on hardware you own.
Announced Tuesday, Portable Computer brings Perplexity’s agentic Computer platform to Nvidia DGX Spark and other Linux machines with compatible Nvidia graphics cards.
The company says every task begins on your machine. If the local model reaches a step that requires more advanced reasoning, Portable Computer asks for permission before sending that individual step to a frontier model in the cloud. The answer then returns to the local workflow, while files and other sensitive information can remain on the device.
That could make it appealing to anyone who wants the convenience of an AI agent without automatically handing everything it touches to a cloud provider.
There is, however, a fairly expensive catch.
More than a locally installed chatbot
You can already download open models and run them on your own computer. The difficult part is turning one of those models into an AI agent that can work with files, use tools and complete a task involving several steps.
Doing that usually means finding and configuring an inference engine, agent harness, sandbox and any connectors needed to reach outside apps. You’re also responsible for getting all those pieces to work together.
Portable Computer packages that stack into one system. It includes the local model, inference engine, agent tools, app connectors and an isolated sandbox where it can execute code and use tools.
The AI can work with files stored on your computer, read PDFs, run shell commands, take dictation and search the web. Users can also connect services including Google Drive, Gmail, Slack and GitHub.
Code and tool use happen inside the local sandbox, according to Perplexity. That provides some separation between the AI agent and the rest of the machine, although I’d still want more detail about exactly what it can access and how those permissions are controlled.
It knows when to ask for help
The hybrid routing is probably the most interesting part of Portable Computer.
A smaller local model may be enough to locate a file, extract information from a PDF or carry out a straightforward series of steps. It is less likely to match the reasoning capabilities of the largest models from OpenAI, Anthropic or Google.
Perplexity’s answer is to let the task remain local until the model encounters something it cannot reliably handle. Portable Computer can then ask whether it may send that step to a cloud model.
Users don’t have to select a privacy mode or create their own routing rules. The system makes the decision while it is working, but the user still has to approve the handoff. A supposedly local AI system becomes much less private if it quietly falls back to the cloud whenever a task gets difficult.
Perplexity also says locally completed work won’t consume billing credits. Only the portion sent to the cloud will count toward cloud usage.
At launch, users can choose a 27-billion-parameter Qwen model or Perplexity’s own post-trained version, called PPLX 27B. Nvidia’s Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is expected to follow. Users will also be able to bring their own model and inference server.
The hardware is the catch
Portable Computer may run on your PC, but not just any PC.
The software launches first on Linux and requires Nvidia hardware with at least 24GB of VRAM. It supports the desktop-sized Nvidia DGX Spark as well as compatible computers running DGX OS or Ubuntu on ARM or x64 hardware.
Windows support is scheduled to arrive in September. Perplexity hasn’t announced support for macOS.
Portable Computer will be available to Perplexity Pro, Max, Enterprise Pro and Enterprise Max subscribers. Even with a compatible subscription, most people won’t have the necessary hardware sitting under their desks.
That makes this initial release more relevant to AI enthusiasts, developers and companies that already own high-end Nvidia systems than someone deciding between ChatGPT and Perplexity on an ordinary laptop.
Still, the idea behind it could reach a much wider audience. AI assistants are gaining access to increasingly personal information, including email, work documents and files stored on our computers. Running more of that work locally gives users another way to decide what leaves their machine and when.
Portable Computer isn’t ready to replace a cloud chatbot for most people. It does, however, offer a glimpse of what a more private AI assistant could look like once the hardware needed to run one becomes easier to afford.
Follow Tom's Guide on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Subscribe to Tom's Guide on YouTube and follow us on TikTok.
More from Tom's Guide
