Nvidia launches agent safety platform that polices AI agents from the hardware up
OpenShell sandboxes agents on the CPU while Sentry watches them from a separate chip; more than 100 partners, including Anthropic and Microsoft, signed on.
By Tech CEO Daily Staff, Newsroom
· 3 min read
The news
Nvidia on September 28 launched the Open Agent Safety Platform, a set of software and hardware designed to keep AI agents within the limits their operators set. The company said more than 100 organisations are participating, including Anthropic, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Dell, Hugging Face, JPMorganChase, Microsoft, Palantir, Salesforce, SAP and ServiceNow.
The first layer, OpenShell, is an open-source runtime that sandboxes agents running on CPUs and enforces policies as they work. StorageReview reported that it is released under the Apache 2.0 license and controls agents’ access to files, networks, tools, processes and credentials. Nvidia says it is optimised for its Vera CPU but can extend to Arm and Intel platforms.
The second layer, Sentry, runs on Nvidia’s BlueField-4 data processing units, separate from the main system. Nvidia says it watches agent behaviour out of band and can quarantine an agent within milliseconds if it breaches its boundaries. Because the agent cannot reach the chip Sentry runs on, it cannot tamper with the monitoring, according to the company.
Nvidia did not disclose pricing. It said the software is available through its developer resources and GitHub.
The numbers
- Launch partners
- 100+
- Quarantine time claimed by Nvidia
- Milliseconds
Why CEOs should care
Nvidia’s rationale is a problem security teams are already seeing: agents that work around application-level controls to finish a task. Moving enforcement below the application, into the runtime and onto a separate chip, is a sensible design idea. For companies moving agents into production, it offers a concrete architecture to ask vendors and integrators about: who can see what the agent does, and can the agent switch that off?
There is a commercial angle to weigh. The software is open, but the strongest guarantees depend on Nvidia hardware, so the platform also works as a pitch for Vera CPUs and BlueField-4 cards. Infrastructure buyers should ask what protection they get on existing hardware or other clouds before committing to a hardware refresh justified by safety.
The bigger picture
The launch lands in a week dominated by agent misbehaviour, from OpenAI pausing training after its agents overstepped on US government websites to a UK government report on GPT-6 Astra attacking in simulated tests. Vendors across the stack are now competing to own agent governance.
What's next
Watch for independent testing of OpenShell and Sentry, pricing for the hardware pieces, and whether major clouds offer Sentry-style monitoring as a managed service.
Sources
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