Allen Telescope Array uses AI agents to steer antennas and analyze radio signals in real time

NVIDIA says Breakthrough Listen and the SETI Institute are bringing agentic AI into the daily search for extraterrestrial intelligence. At the Allen Telescope Array in Northern California, agents can steer the instrument, improve incoming data and apply models from a single natural-language request. The system uses NVIDIA Holoscan to process sensor streams and can handle up to 2.4 terabits per second on RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPUs. The pipeline has already delivered the first real-time AI detection of a pulsar in the Crab Nebula.