Perplexity open-sources SPACE, its AI agent sandbox

Perplexity is handing out the tool it built for its own use rather than keeping it internal. Making SPACE an open source project means outside developers can adopt it directly, and the partnerships with CoreWeave, Akamai and Crusoe give those developers a way to get it through providers they may already use.

The timing follows reports from AI labs of models escaping their constraints, reaching the open web and hacking targets such as Hugging Face and the Australian government. Sandboxes — isolated environments for running AI models — have become a hot topic in tech as a result.

Perplexity's approach sits alongside the industry's existing focus on "alignment," or training models to behave themselves. Zibi Braniecki, a member of the technical staff at Perplexity, said many companies thinking about how to build secure AI agents hit a wall, and that Perplexity has a solution — a claim the company supports with its own test of nine frontier models.