Perplexity said on 15 October 2026 that it is open-sourcing SPACE, the sandbox platform behind its Computer agent product, in a post on its blog. The company says SPACE has powered all Computer sessions since July and has handled millions of sandbox creations per day.
CoreWeave and Akamai have tested and launched SPACE on their cloud platforms and are working with Perplexity to make it available to their customers, the post says, while Crusoe is partnering to bring it to its Managed AI Services portfolio. The code is on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license.
Business Pill · GUARDRAILS
A one-minute explainer of guardrails: rules enforced around an AI model rather than inside it. It teaches the general idea only and says nothing about any company in this story.
The key insight: As we read it, Perplexity is giving away the layer it built to replace a vendor: the post says SPACE replaced a commercially available sandbox provider in July and is now open source, with CoreWeave, Akamai and Crusoe working to offer it to their customers.
SPACE stands for Sandboxed Platform for Agentic Code Execution. According to its GitHub README, it is “a sandbox platform for running code in isolated Firecracker microVMs,” and applications use its HTTP API to create Linux environments, execute commands, collect output, and manage sandbox lifecycles.
Perplexity says that in July it replaced its commercially available sandbox provider with SPACE, an in-house solution. The post does not name that earlier provider.
In Computer, the post says, SPACE supports isolated code execution, pause and resume, recovery, and session branching. Perplexity gives examples of what assistants built on it could do: clean a spreadsheet and chart the results in a separate workspace, pause for a person to review a draft and then resume with files and running state preserved, or test two ways of cleaning a dataset in separate copies of a workspace.
“Today, we’re open-sourcing SPACE to give developers a foundation for building safer agent systems and contributing to stronger protections across the industry,” the company writes.
Perplexity says its own security evaluation found no escape from SPACE’s virtual machine to the host in 108 attempts, though some attempts found ways around network restrictions that it says it has since fixed; SPACE has handled millions of sandbox creations per day since July (Perplexity, 15 October 2026).
What Was Posted on X
We’re open sourcing SPACE, the sandbox platform that runs every task in Perplexity Computer.
SPACE gives each agent task its own Firecracker microVM and controls credentials and outbound traffic from outside the VM.
Perplexity announcing on 15 Oct that it is open-sourcing SPACE, the sandbox that runs every task in Perplexity Computer: each agent task gets its own Firecracker microVM, credentials and outbound traffic are controlled from outside the VM, and the code is under Apache 2.0.
Building safer AI agents takes more than model safeguards.
@perplexity_ai open sourced SPACE, the agent sandbox platform behind Computer, giving developers more control over where agents run code and what they can access.
Cheers to more teams open-sourcing tools to build safer autonomous AI agents.
NVIDIA AI quoting Perplexity’s announcement on 17 Oct and welcoming more teams open-sourcing tools for safer autonomous agents, saying safer agents take more than model safeguards. It is NVIDIA’s comment, not a joint release.
How the Sandbox Works
Each SPACE sandbox runs inside a small virtual machine with its own operating system, the post says, creating an isolation boundary between the agent’s work and the host system. A central control plane coordinates when workspaces are created, paused, resumed, or removed.
Perplexity says SPACE treats the sandbox as untrusted and manages network access and platform-held credentials outside it, so agents can connect to authorized services without those credentials being stored in their working environment.
The README’s documentation list also includes an E2B Compatibility Wrapper, a guide to using the tested E2B Python SDK with SPACE.
The Production and Security Numbers
Since July, the post says, SPACE has powered all Computer sessions and handled millions of sandbox creations per day. Perplexity says that in a comparison on the same production traffic, sandbox creation was three to five times faster than with its previous provider.
The company also cites its own security evaluation: “Our published security evaluation found no escape from the virtual machine to the host in 108 attempts, but some found ways around network restrictions.” Perplexity says it fixed those weaknesses and that neither identified attack method succeeded in follow-up testing.
Perplexity says it also disclosed related weaknesses it found in other sandbox platforms to their vendors.
The Cloud Partners
The post names three cloud companies. CoreWeave and Akamai, it says, “have tested and launched SPACE successfully in their respective cloud platforms and are working with Perplexity to make SPACE available to their customers.” Crusoe is partnering with Perplexity to bring SPACE to its Managed AI Services portfolio on its cloud platform.
Perplexity places SPACE in a wider open-source security effort run through its Secure Intelligence Institute. The post lists three earlier releases: BrowseSafe, a model and benchmark for detecting malicious instructions hidden in web pages; Numbat, a security toolkit open-sourced in July; and Bumblebee, a scanner open-sourced in May that checks developer machines for risky software packages, extensions, and AI tool configurations.
“We believe open-sourcing security tools gives developers more ways to test defenses, find weaknesses, and build safer AI systems,” the company writes.
The Structural Read
As we read it, the release turns an internal cost centre into shared infrastructure: Perplexity says SPACE has powered all Computer sessions since July with millions of sandbox creations per day, and it now publishes the code under Apache 2.0.
As we read it, the security design puts the trust boundary outside the model: the post says SPACE treats the sandbox as untrusted and keeps network access and platform-held credentials outside it, so limits hold regardless of what an agent decides to do.
As we read it, distribution runs through the cloud providers rather than through Perplexity: the post says CoreWeave and Akamai have launched SPACE on their platforms and are working to make it available to customers, and Crusoe will add it to its Managed AI Services.
Perplexity, in its 15 October 2026 post
“Sandboxes keep agents secure, letting them access the tools and files they need to complete these tasks, while keeping sensitive information protected.”
Three Implications
CLOUD PROVIDERS The post names CoreWeave, Akamai and Crusoe as the companies working with Perplexity to offer SPACE to their customers.
AGENT BUILDERS Perplexity says developers can start with SPACE’s setup instructions and security guidance, and the repository and documentation define the supported configurations.
OTHER SANDBOX VENDORS The post says Perplexity disclosed related weaknesses it found in other sandbox platforms to their vendors.
The framework states the pattern it sees in platform shifts: “Close the SCARCE layer (keep proprietary) + Open the ABUNDANT layer (commoditize)”.
As we read it, Perplexity is treating the sandbox as a layer to open: it says it is open-sourcing SPACE so developers do not have to recreate the underlying infrastructure, while its product, Computer, runs on top. The framework does not discuss Perplexity or SPACE.
The four releases Perplexity lists in its 15 October 2026 post: SPACE (sandbox), Numbat (security toolkit, open-sourced in July), Bumblebee (scanner, open-sourced in May) and BrowseSafe (model and benchmark). The partners it names for SPACE are CoreWeave, Akamai and Crusoe.
What Is Not Established
The post we read gives no pricing for the partner offerings, no date by which SPACE will be available to CoreWeave, Akamai or Crusoe customers, and no names of customers using it.
The speed comparison and the security evaluation are Perplexity’s own, measured on its own traffic and testing.
Perplexity is open-sourcing SPACE, the in-house sandbox platform that it says has powered all Computer sessions since July and handled millions of sandbox creations per day, under the Apache 2.0 license.
The company says CoreWeave and Akamai have launched SPACE on their cloud platforms and are working to offer it to customers, and that Crusoe will bring it to its Managed AI Services portfolio.
A note on sourcing. We read Perplexity’s 15 October 2026 post “Open-sourcing SPACE, the sandbox platform behind Computer” in full, along with the SPACE README on GitHub; every specification, partner detail, speed figure and security result comes from them, and the speed and security figures are Perplexity’s own. The CoreWeave context comes from our own earlier reporting. We did not use other outlets’ reports.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
