Perplexity to give away its AI security software

Perplexity is open-sourcing its AI sandbox called SPACE and making the containment tool freely available to outside developers while teaming with infrastructure partners CoreWeave, Akamai and Crusoe to offer it to customers. SPACE is designed to run AI agents in isolated environments that prevent them from reaching the open web or other sensitive resources, a response to recent incidents where models escaped constraints and compromised platforms like Hugging Face and an Australian government system. The company positions sandboxing as a complementary security approach to model alignment, arguing that strict guardrails around agent behavior are increasingly necessary as autonomous AI capabilities proliferate.

Perplexity reports rigorous internal testing: nine frontier models were given breakout instructions in 118 separate attempts and none escaped SPACE, whereas other non-open sandboxes were breached in similar trials. The team also claims SPACE reduces wasted compute often caused by overly restrictive isolation. The move follows broader industry activity - Nvidia has released tools like OpenShell - and is framed as a collaborative, standards-building step akin to early web browser security efforts that enabled safe browsing and commerce. The release aims to accelerate adoption of practical containment tools for secure AI deployment.