Perplexity has introduced Hybrid Compute for its Mac app, a feature that divides AI tasks between cloud-based frontier models and smaller models running directly on a user’s computer. The company says the approach can keep confidential files and personal data on the device while assigning web research and more demanding reasoning tasks to cloud systems.
The feature is available to Perplexity Pro and Max subscribers and enterprise customers using Apple Silicon Macs with macOS 15 or later. Perplexity recommends at least 32GB of unified memory for the more capable local models.
Hybrid Compute uses a locally running “Privacy Gate” to identify potentially sensitive material before it is sent to the cloud. According to Perplexity, the classifier can flag information such as names, addresses, account numbers and secrets. Users can review the material identified by the system and decide whether it should stay local or be shared with cloud services.
The cloud model acts as an orchestrator. It breaks a larger job into smaller parts, directing private-file analysis and device actions to a local subagent while handling public web research and planning in the cloud. Perplexity says this could help lawyers compare privileged documents with public case law, or let finance teams combine internal projections with public market data.
Users can select Google’s Gemma E4B or versions of Alibaba’s Qwen 3.6 35B model for local processing. Perplexity also offers a post-trained Qwen variant. The company says local tokens do not consume cloud credits, although cloud orchestration still does.
Perplexity executive Jon Staff acknowledges that a fully cloud-based frontier model will generally deliver stronger results. The tradeoff, he says, is between raw model capability, cost and data privacy. The Privacy Gate also introduces a limitation: if its classifier fails to recognize sensitive information, that information could still be cleared for cloud sharing.
Sources
- Perplexity launches Hybrid Compute, which splits workloads between frontier cloud models like Opus 5 and local LLMs, for all users of its Mac app – Engadget
- Your files stay put: Perplexity’s hybrid AI keeps confidential data off the cloud – VentureBeat
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