Perplexity partners with Nvidia to launch Portable Computer, a fully local AI agent with zero token costs - VentureBeat

Perplexity has launched Portable Computer, a new version of its agentic Computer platform, developed in partnership with Nvidia. According to VentureBeat, the product is designed to run entirely on hardware that users already own, rather than requiring dedicated cloud infrastructure. The supported systems at launch are Nvidia's DGX Spark desktop supercomputer and Linux machines equipped with Nvidia RTX GPUs. The announcement frames Portable Computer as a fully local AI agent with zero token costs. The product is described as a version of Perplexity's Computer platform.

Perplexity said that work completed locally consumes no billing credits, meaning the usual per-token costs do not apply to local operations. Every task begins on the device by default, a design choice that keeps the initial workload on local hardware. The system asks for permission before sending any individual step to a more powerful frontier model in the cloud. This permission-based escalation gives users control over which parts of a task are transmitted off-device. It also preserves access to cloud-scale computation for selected steps.

The product is an effort by Perplexity to reduce dependence on cloud inference for agentic AI tasks. Because local operations do not incur token costs, the design lowers the cost of running AI agents for users with compatible Nvidia hardware. The permission-based escalation creates a hybrid workflow in which a task can remain on-device, move to the cloud, or combine both depending on user approval. The excerpt does not provide technical specifications for the required Nvidia hardware, nor does it specify which frontier model would be used for cloud escalation. No pricing, availability dates, or performance benchmarks were included in the report summarized here.