The Deep View: Why AI agents are moving to your desktop

Posted on August 26, 2026 by michelleclarke2015
Why AI agents are moving to your desktopPerplexity is doing what it does best. Releasing something that feels like others could soon copy. But this time, Nvidia is joining in as a partner. 

On Tuesday, Perplexity announced Portable Computer, a version of its AI agent that can run open models locally on your own desktop hardware to do three things: 

Save significant money on tokens

Get faster performance

Boost data privacy

That’s the kind of stuff more and more people have been trying to do because of soaring token bills due to AI agents and because of wanting to run agents on their most sensitive data, which they’d prefer to run locally and not send to the latest frontier models in the cloud from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and others. 

Where Nvidia comes in is that Portable Computer will run on Nvidia’s DGX Spark machine, which has cult favorite status among AI builders. It’s a tiny box the size of Mac mini, but with the power of a Mac Studio for running AI. Spark has 128GB of unified memory and runs up to a petaflop of compute. Nvidia says it runs models up to 200B parameters and can fine-tune models up to 70B.Perplexity’s Personal Computer ran on a Mac mini at launch, so a big part of the announcement is Perplexity’s AI agent now running on PC hardware powered by Nvidia GPUs. That means it’s likely to come to other DGX Spark competitors like the ones from Dell, Lenovo, Asus, MSI, and others.

Right now, the software only runs on Linux. But Perplexity is also working on a version that will run on Windows, as well as a version that will run on Nvidia’s more powerful version of DGX Spark called DGX Station, which is the size of a full computer tower like a Mac Pro.The other big part of the announcement, of course, is being able to run Perplexity’s agent on open models that run locally on your machine. At launch, Portable Computer will run a post-trained version of Alibaba’s Qwen 3.8 27B called PPLX 27B, with a version of Nvidia’s Nemotron 3.5 Lightning coming to the device soon, according to Perplexity. You can also use a local inference server like Ollama or LM Studio to run any open model you’d like, but that starts to get a little more complicated.The problem that Perplexity and Nvidia are trying to solve is that more and more people are trying their hand at AI agents and would like to save the token costs and get the privacy you can get by running these models locally, but it’s a very involved process that requires time and technical expertise.”Now that we’re seeing people actually run frontier intelligence on their desk, the remaining bottleneck becomes that it’s quite cumbersome to set up,” said Nate Kupp, VP of infrastructure at Perplexity, in a briefing with the media. “We really focused on making this a straightforward experience where you can get up and running very quickly.”While DGX Spark and competitors cost $4,000-$5,000, they can save you so much in token costs that AI builders don’t even blink at that price. Heavy AI agent users can spend up to twice that a month in token costs. And if Portable Computer catches on, and other AI companies offer something similar, then it could increase competition and drive down the price tag.Perplexity’s best attribute is arguably how fast it can execute. It’s small and nimble and, again and again, the team has shown the ability to launch things quickly. Its AI agent was an idea that was hatched in about a month and launched around the same time OpenClaw went viral in early 2026. Perplexity’s general purpose agent can now help you code your own software like Claude Code or OpenAI’s Codex, but it can also help you carry out knowledge work tasks the same way Claude Cowork and ChatGPT Work can. The ability to run locally on open models is a super power. But even highly technical people have complained about how involved the setup is to get Nvidia’s DGX Spark up and running, so this would be a win for both Nvidia and AI enthusiasts if Perplexity can make that process more streamlined. Jason Hiner, Editor-in-Chief
 

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About michelleclarke2015

Life event that changes all: Horse riding accident in Zimbabwe in 1993, a fractured skull et al including bipolar anxiety, chronic fatigue …. co-morbidities (Nietzche 'He who has the reason why can deal with any how' details my health history from 1993 to date). 17th 2017 August operation for breast cancer (no indications just an appointment came from BreastCheck through the Post). Trinity College Dublin Business Economics and Social Studies (but no degree) 1997-2003; UCD 1997/1998 night classes) essays, projects, writings. Trinity Horizon Programme 1997/98 (Centre for Women Studies Trinity College Dublin/St. Patrick's Foundation (Professor McKeon) EU Horizon funded: research study of 15 women (I was one of this group and it became the cornerstone of my journey to now 2017) over 9 mth period diagnosed with depression and their reintegration into society, with special emphasis on work, arts, further education; Notes from time at Trinity Horizon Project 1997/98; Articles written for Irishhealth.com 2003/2004; St Patricks Foundation monthly lecture notes for a specific period in time; Selection of Poetry including poems written by people I know; Quotations 1998-2017; other writings mainly with theme of social justice under the heading Citizen Journalism Ireland. Letters written to friends about life in Zimbabwe; Family history including Michael Comyn KC, my grandfather, my grandmother's family, the O'Donnellan ffrench Blake-Forsters; Moral wrong: An acrimonious divorce but the real injustice was the Catholic Church granting an annulment – you can read it and make your own judgment, I have mine. Topics I have written about include annual Brain Awareness week, Mashonaland Irish Associataion in Zimbabwe, Suicide (a life sentence to those left behind); Nostalgia: Tara Hill, Co. Meath.
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