Perplexity pitches a more secure OpenClaw

Ina Fried

Speaker in a gray t-shirt presents on a stage with a large screen showing a blue rounded-square icon and the title "Personal Computer" by perplexity. — Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, speaking Wednesday at the company's Ask Conference in San Francisco. Photo: Ina Fried/Axios

Perplexity used its first developer conference on Wednesday to announce new AI agent tools and software that can turn a spare computer into a locally controlled AI system similar to OpenClaw.

Why it matters: Perplexity — a company without its own frontier models — needs to justify why customers should pay it a monthly fee rather than go directly to OpenAI, Anthropic or Google.

The big picture: Perplexity now has two AI agents designed to handle a wide range of tasks.

"Personal Computer" runs locally on a dedicated device.
"Perplexity Computer," which was announced a few weeks ago, operates in the cloud.

Driving the news: "Personal Computer" software runs on a dedicated device — such as a Mac mini — with full local access to files and apps.

Perplexity says the setup is more secure than OpenClaw — requiring all actions to be confirmed by the user and including a built-in audit trail.
Perplexity Max subscribers — its highest-priced tier — will get priority access. The feature will initially be available only on Mac.
"A traditional operating system takes instructions; an AI operating system takes objectives," CEO Aravind Srinivas said at Ask, the company's developer conference held in a former church in San Francisco's North Beach.

Access will be limited at launch through a waitlist.

Zoom out: The company also announced an expansion to Perplexity Computer, its cloud-based AI agent.

The enterprise version has added security controls, compliance features and single sign-on support.
The agent can now run from a mobile phone, not just a PC or Mac.

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Perplexity pitches a more secure OpenClaw

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