❯ Perplexity Launches Fully Local Portable Computer, Zero Token Cost for Local Steps

FULL-LOCALPerplexity, in partnership with Nvidia, is launching Portable Computer, packaging models, inference engines, agent frameworks, tool sandboxes, and app connectors into a single system that runs entirely on the user’s own hardware. Local steps incur zero token cost. Initial support covers Qwen 3.8 27B and Perplexity’s own post-trained PPLX 27B, with Nvidia Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B following shortly.

HARDWAREThe runtime is Nvidia DGX OS or Ubuntu, with both ARM and x64 supported. RTX GPUs require at least 24 GB of VRAM; the desktop-class Nvidia DGX Spark is the current flagship form factor. When a task exceeds what the local model can handle, it pauses to ask whether to hand off to a cloud large model, rather than silently uploading. The sandbox is hard-isolated at the OS level. Previously, similar local solutions mostly shipped only model weights, leaving the toolchain to be assembled yourself.

SETUP SAVEDThe real value is removing the barrier to “building your own local agent stack”—starting inference services, wiring in tools, configuring a sandbox—which used to take days. Compliance officers managing corporate data egress now have an extra option: sensitive documents can be processed without ever leaving the machine. Subscription AI apps have always billed on cloud invocations; once this local path is viable, the billing metric itself needs a rewrite.

▪ SIGNALZero token cost isn’t about saving money—it turns data staying on-prem from a compliance promise into a physical fact.