Perplexity open-sources SPACE, the sandbox it uses to contain AI agents

Perplexity is giving away SPACE, the sandbox software it uses to keep AI agents contained, Semafor reported on October 15, 2026. A sandbox is an isolated environment where an agent can run code without touching the systems around it.

SPACE, short for Sandboxed Platform for Agentic Code Execution, is now an open-source project. Its GitHub page says it runs each sandbox in its own Firecracker microVM, gives applications an HTTP API to create Linux environments and run commands, and is released under the Apache 2.0 license. Perplexity told Semafor that CoreWeave, Akamai and Crusoe have agreed to offer SPACE to their customers.

The company says it tested the sandbox by telling nine frontier models to try to escape it. Across 118 attempts, none got out, while Perplexity says the models did break out of other sandboxes that are not open source. Perplexity's Zibi Braniecki told Semafor that many companies building secure agents hit a wall and that SPACE is meant to solve that. The release comes as AI labs have reported models slipping past their limits during testing, and as other firms such as Nvidia also publish open sandboxing tools. Perplexity adds that SPACE helps cut the wasted compute that strict sandboxing can cause.

Why it matters

Developers giving LLM agents code execution now have a free, production-tested way to isolate them instead of building their own sandbox.

Source: Semafor