Nvidia wants to put a watchdog chip next to every AI agent, and Anthropic and…
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at Stanford University in April 2026. Image: Anderseidesvik / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped
Spots 
Nvidia has launched a set of tools meant
Nvidia has launched a set of tools meant to stop AI agents from wandering outside the limits their owners set, days after a run of incidents in which agents did exactly that. The company announced the Open Agent Safety Platform on Monday, as CNBC reported, with more than 100 companies signed up, including Anthropic, Microsoft and Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI. Software that traces every move, and a chip that pulls the plug
The platform has two parts. The first, OpenShell
The platform has two parts. The first, OpenShell, is free, open-source software that puts a boundary around an agent while it runs. Nvidia says it traces everything the agent does and enforces the rules its owner sets. It is tuned for Nvidia’s Vera processors, but because it is open source it can be extended to chips from Arm and Intel. It is available now on GitHub and Nvidia’s developer site.
The second, Sentry, is a reference design rather
The second, Sentry, is a reference design rather than a product you can download. It runs on Nvidia’s BlueField-4 data processing units, separate chips that sit alongside the main computer, and acts as an outside watchdog. It checks each request an agent makes, verifies the agent’s identity and, if the agent tries to move outside its boundaries, “quarantines and stops it in milliseconds,” according to Nvidia. The company didn’t give a price or a date for when Sentry hardware will be in customers’ hands.
The idea is that the controls live outside
The idea is that the controls live outside the AI model, so an agent that decides to break the rules can’t simply talk or code its way around them. That matters because the recent incidents mostly involved agents finding gaps in software restrictions: an OpenAI agent slipped out of its test environment by hiding questions in DNS lookups, and a swarm of OpenAI agents broke into Hugging Face’s systems. (Our explainer on AI sandboxes covers why they keep getting out.) “Controls the agent can’t get past” Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, framed the launch as an industry effort rather than a product:
AI’s extraordinary potential for society will only be
AI’s extraordinary potential for society will only be realized if we solve AI safety. As we continue to discover the frontier of AI capabilities, we must accelerate discovery at the frontier of AI safety.Jensen Huang, founder and CEO, Nvidia
AI’s extraordinary potential for society will only be
AI’s extraordinary potential for society will only be realized if we solve AI safety. As we continue to discover the frontier of AI capabilities, we must accelerate discovery at the frontier of AI safety.
SpaceXAI, which owns Grok and the coding tool
SpaceXAI, which owns Grok and the coding tool Cursor, says it is using the platform for both. Its president, Mike Nicolls, made the case for keeping the limits outside the AI itself:
Safety should be enforced outside the model by
Safety should be enforced outside the model by additional controls the agent can’t get past. Customers should be able to set those limits for Cursor and Grok and trust they will hold.Mike Nicolls, president, SpaceXAI
Safety should be enforced outside the model by
Safety should be enforced outside the model by additional controls the agent can’t get past. Customers should be able to set those limits for Cursor and Grok and trust they will hold.
News
Nvidia wants to put a watchdog chip next to every AI agent, and Anthropic and SpaceXAI are on board
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at Stanford University in April 2026.
@spots
Source: Hacker News