Perplexity's hybrid AI keeps confidential data off the cloud

Summary

Perplexity launched hybrid compute for its agentic platform, Computer, enabling a single AI agent to split tasks between cloud frontier models and smaller open-weight models running locally on Apple silicon Macs, routing sensitive data to the local device. The company says it's the first time an AI agent can start a task in the cloud and dynamically hand off confidential parts to a local model without restarting or losing context. The feature is available to enterprise customers and Pro/Max subscribers on Apple silicon Macs running macOS 15 or later.