By Ana Maria Constantin
Publication Date: 2026-03-12 08:51:00
At its first developer conference, held in a former North Beach church, Perplexity unveiled Personal Computer, expanded its cloud agent to enterprise, opened up finance data tools, and staked its identity on a single claim: AI is the computer now.
Two weeks after launching Perplexity Computer, a cloud-based AI agent that can orchestrate 20 frontier models to execute multi-step workflows autonomously, the company used its inaugural Ask 2026 developer conference in San Francisco on Wednesday to dramatically widen the platform’s reach.
The centrepiece of announcement is Personal Computer: software that runs continuously on a user-supplied Mac mini, merging local files, apps, and sessions with Perplexity’s cloud-based Computer system.
The idea is to give the AI persistent, always-on access to everything on your machine, Gmail, Slack, GitHub, Notion, Salesforce, so it can monitor triggers, execute proactive tasks, and carry work forward around the clock without requiring the user to be present.
Sensitive actions require explicit approval, every session generates a full audit trail, and a kill switch gives users immediate control.
Personal Computer is software, not hardware. Perplexity is not manufacturing a device. The Mac mini acts as the always-on host; Perplexity’s platform…
