ANO—THER. ● NEWS

Perplexity

Illustration for the Perplexity CobbleDB story
infrastructureproducts

Perplexity built its search database with two engineers and AI agents

Perplexity published research on September 15, 2026 describing CobbleDB, a key-value store purpose-built for the repeated batch reads that serve prepared web page records to its search product. It replaced DynamoDB in production. Median batch-read latency fell from 31.4 to 5.60 milliseconds and the p99 from 123 to 24.2 milliseconds, and the company's internal cost model estimates at least 20 percent savings against DynamoDB. Perplexity says two human engineers and hundreds of proactive, always-on AI agents built the core infrastructure in two months, and that it plans to open-source CobbleDB.

Illustration for the Perplexity Portable Computer story
products

Perplexity's AI agent now runs locally on high-end RTX PCs

Perplexity and Nvidia announced on September 14, 2026, that Portable Computer, the local version of the Perplexity Computer agent, is available in Perplexity's Windows app. It needs an Nvidia GeForce RTX or RTX PRO GPU with 24GB or more of video memory and is available to Perplexity Pro and Max subscribers. The agent works on the user's files locally, and according to Nvidia it asks permission before sending anything to cloud models.

Illustration for the Perplexity Hybrid Compute story
products

Perplexity's Mac app keeps sensitive steps on a local model

Perplexity launched Hybrid Compute for its Mac app on September 1, 2026, available to Pro, Max and Enterprise subscribers on Apple silicon Macs. A task starts in the cloud, and when a local classifier detects potentially sensitive information it alerts the user and asks whether to route that step to a local model, so confidential files and personal data do not have to leave the machine. Local models at launch are Gemma E4B, Qwen3.6 35B-A3B and a Perplexity post-trained version of Qwen3.6 35B, and a task started from an iPhone or iPad can run its sensitive steps on a Mac that is on and running the app.

Illustration for the EU Android AI assistants story
policyproducts

The EU orders Google to open Android to rival AI assistants

On July 16, 2026 the European Commission adopted two binding Digital Markets Act decisions against Google. One forces Google to open 11 Android feature groups to rival AI assistants with the same system-level access Gemini gets, from voice activation to acting across apps; the other requires Google to share anonymized search query, click and ranking data with competitors on fair terms. Google says the decisions risk undermining privacy and security guardrails for millions of Europeans.