“Stateful systems are incredibly hard to build”: How Perplexity thinks about AI agent sandboxes

Perplexity launched SPACE on July 15 as the sandbox layer behind its Computer agent platform.

The main challenge was not isolation, but managing persistent agent state across millions of sandboxes.

SPACE supports pause, resume, fork, and snapshot workflows for sessions that can last days or weeks.

It uses Firecracker, Kubernetes, and Btrfs, and Perplexity says it improves performance and cost versus existing sandbox providers.

The platform also adds enterprise controls for access and tool usage, aiming at long-lived agents tied to sensitive business systems.