Perplexity open-sources SPACE agent sandbox and publishes escape tests

On October 16, 2026, Perplexity announced on X that it is open sourcing SPACE, the sandbox platform that runs every task in Perplexity Computer. According to the company, SPACE is the first component of its Agentic Runtime Platform. Each agent task gets its own Firecracker microVM, with credentials and outbound traffic controlled from outside the VM. Perplexity said the release is meant to raise the security bar for agentic products. SPACE is available now under Apache 2.0. The posts pointed to a blog link and did not include further technical details in the same thread.

On the same day, Perplexity published results from a test titled "Escaping SPACE: Part I." The company said it attacked SPACE using frontier models. Nine model configurations with root access inside the VM made 108 escape attempts, and none reached the host. Perplexity presented this adversarial testing as validation of the SPACE sandbox's security.

So far, the public information stops there: SPACE is open sourced under Apache 2.0, and Perplexity has reported that all 108 escape attempts failed to break out. No further technical details or follow-up plans have been disclosed.