Perplexity launched hybrid compute for its agentic platform, Computer, allowing a single AI agent to split work between frontier models in the cloud and smaller open-weight models running locally on Apple silicon Macs. ^[1] Perplexity built a company-trained classifier called a Privacy Gate that runs on the device to scan for personally identifiable information before anything is transmitted to the cloud. ^[2] The feature became available on 2026-07-11 through Perplexity's desktop app for enterprise customers that opt in, as well as Pro and Max subscribers, on any Apple silicon Mac running macOS 15 or later. ^[3] The system routes sensitive data to the local machine so it never leaves the device, enabling tasks to begin in the cloud and dynamically hand off confidential portions to local models without restarting. ^[4] A Perplexity-trained Privacy Gate runs locally on the Mac to identify sensitive information such as names, addresses, account numbers, and secrets. ^[5] The Hybrid Compute feature was launched on the first day of John Ternus's tenure as Apple's CEO, succeeding Tim Cook after 15 years. ^[6] Hybrid Compute requires at least 32GB of unified memory, Apple Silicon, and macOS 15, indicating that meaningful local AI work still requires high-end hardware. ^[7]