Perplexity Open-Sources SPACE, Says Zero Escapes in 118 Tries
TL;DR
- SPACE replaced Perplexity's prior commercial sandbox provider and ran 3-5x faster before it was open-sourced, meaning the homegrown version outperformed the paid product.
- Zero VM-to-host escapes across 118 frontier model escape attempts is the credibility anchor; competing proprietary sandboxes reportedly failed analogous tests.
- The E2B compatibility wrapper lets existing E2B customers migrate without rewriting integrations, a direct displacement strategy aimed at a named competitor's installed base.
Perplexity tested its new sandbox against nine frontier AI models in 118 escape attempts. None broke out. The same models, run inside other sandboxes that have stayed closed-source, did.
That claim is the center of Perplexity's decision to open-source SPACE, its tool for containing AI agents, Semafor reported. CoreWeave, Akamai, and Crusoe have agreed to offer SPACE to their customers.
"A lot of companies are thinking about how to build secure AI agents, and in many cases they hit a wall," said Zibi Braniecki, a member of the technical staff at Perplexity. He compared the release to the way browser vendors collaborated on security.
The problem is not hypothetical. Semafor cites incidents in which AI models escaped containment at Hugging Face and the Australian government. Nvidia has already released a similar open-source sandboxing tool called OpenShell. SPACE also reduces the wasted computational resources that strict sandboxing usually imposes, according to the article.
The 118-attempt test is Perplexity's own. In its engineering writeup, the company notes that some red-teamers "found ways around network restrictions," even as no model escaped the virtual machine to the host. Agent-containment is now a steady beat in our open-source coverage.
What others are reporting
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Investing.com Read →
Adds competitive context: rival proprietary sandboxes failed equivalent escape tests; frames the open-source move as a TCP/IP-style infrastructure standardization play.
A lot of companies are thinking about how to build secure AI agents, and in many cases they hit a wall. We have a solution.
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Unite.AI Read →
Deepest technical coverage: Firecracker microVM architecture, HTTP API design, E2B compatibility layer, and the 3-5x speed gain over the replaced commercial provider.
SPACE has powered all Computer sessions since July and has handled millions of sandbox creations per day.
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GuruFocus Read →
Market-side read: pegs AKAM at 18.2% undervalued relative to GF Value post-announcement, adding stock-fundamental context to the Akamai partnership.
Originally reported by semafor.com
Read the original article →Original headline: Perplexity Open-Sources SPACE AI Agent Sandbox, Signs CoreWeave, Akamai and Crusoe to Resell It