By @AndroidAuth
Publication Date: 2026-08-26 06:40:00
Calvin Wankhede / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Perplexity has launched a new agentic AI tool called “Portable Computer” that runs locally on users’ devices.
- It uses small, efficient models such as Qwen 3.8 and NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Lightning.
- It will not incur token costs for tasks completed locally, but can connect to cloud models if needed.
Months after launching its agentic AI tool, “Personal Computer,” Perplexity is introducing a new option for users who prefer to run their AI agents locally.
The company today announced “Portable Computer,” its local-first agent, in partnership with NVIDIA. Portable Computer will run entirely on-device. The agent, along with the models and other tools, lives locally on the user’s device. This ensures that user data isn’t sent to the cloud and offers a higher level of privacy for sensitive data.
Portable Computer will use very small models such as Qwen 3.8 and NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Lightning. According to Perplexity, these models can perform complex agentic tasks and run on local hardware, making them a good choice for its new local agentic AI.
However, Portable Computer still supports functions such as web search and advanced reasoning with cutting-edge models. If any such feature is required for the task at hand, Perplexity says the agent will always ask the user for permission before proceeding.
The company also states that work handled locally by the user’s machine will not incur any token costs. That could make a huge…
