NVIDIA Launches Open Agent Safety Platform
News Summary:
- NVIDIA Open Agent Safety Platform consists of NVIDIA OpenShell open source software and the NVIDIA Sentry reference system design that enables full-stack governance and control across software and the hardware, compute and robotics systems that run agents.
- OpenShell software provides a secure runtime boundary that traces all actions and enforces policy as agents run on NVIDIA Vera CPUs. As open source software, OpenShell can be extended to work with third-party compute platforms, including those from Arm and Intel.
- Sentry adds an out-of-band watchdog that runs on NVIDIA BlueField-4 DPUs to continuously monitor agent behavior. Sentry can quarantine agents that attempt to move outside their boundaries in milliseconds.
- Industry leaders from across the AI ecosystem are joining NVIDIA to strengthen AI safety for every industry across the full stack of infrastructure, software, models and robotics — including Anthropic, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Dell Technologies, Figure, HPE, Hugging Face, JPMorganChase, Microsoft, Palantir, Palo Alto Networks, Perplexity, Red Hat, Salesforce, SAP, Scale AI, ServiceNow and SpaceXAI.
NVIDIA today announced NVIDIA Open Agent Safety Platform, an open software platform and reference system design to strengthen AI security from agent testing to deployment, with full-stack governance and control across software and the hardware, compute and robotics systems that run agents.
Recent security incidents have underscored the need to equip organizations with open, customizable tools that enforce more control over long-running agents. Across these incidents, the pattern is the same — the agent circumvented security controls at the application layer to complete its assigned task.
“AI’s extraordinary potential for society will only be realized if we solve AI safety,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “As we continue to discover the frontier of AI capabilities, we must accelerate discovery at the frontier of AI safety. Safety and security require full-stack engineering. NVIDIA Open Agent Safety Platform brings together industry, researchers and public-sector organizations to share best practices, align on evaluation methods and foster international cooperation. Together, we can raise the bar for global AI safety.”
Open Agent Safety Platform Adds Control Across the Full Agent Stack
NVIDIA Open Agent Safety Platform enables full-stack governance and control across the software that runs agents, the hardware and compute layers that power their work, and the robotics systems that execute tasks in the physical world. Organizations can deploy elements of NVIDIA Open Agent Safety Platform according to their unique requirements.
It includes NVIDIA OpenShell™ secure runtime software that sets boundaries for agents running on CPUs. As agents take on more work across more systems, enterprises need an enforceable boundary outside of the model and agent harness. Now broadly available, OpenShell provides a secure runtime boundary for controlling how autonomous AI agents execute tasks across open and closed models.
OpenShell delivers this protection with minimal overhead on NVIDIA Vera, the first purpose-built CPU for agentic AI. Together, OpenShell and Vera enable agents to operate securely while completing their work as quickly as possible. As open source software, OpenShell can also be extended to work with third-party compute platforms, including those from Arm and Intel.
The NVIDIA Open Agent Safety Platform reference system design features NVIDIA Sentry, an out-of-band watchdog that runs on NVIDIA BlueField®-4 DPUs to continuously monitor agent behavior. Sentry provides in-silicon security enforcement, meaning that if an AI agent attempts to move outside its software boundary, Sentry quarantines and stops it in milliseconds.
Running on BlueField-4 DPUs, Sentry continuously monitors agent activity and enforces security policies independently in silicon. It combines threat detection, hardware-based agent governance and enforcement and data access protection from an isolated, out-of-band trust domain that is responsive in real time and invisible to agents and attackers.
Sentry is built on NVIDIA DOCA™ software, which provides the programmable capabilities Sentry uses to inspect agent requests and responses, provide attested telemetry, verify agent identity and enforce granular, zero-trust access policies for data, tools, application programming interfaces and services.
Industry Leaders Strengthen Agent Security With NVIDIA
Anthropic and NVIDIA have collaborated to bring additional layers of security and control to the agent stack. Claude Managed Agents establish a security boundary by running the agent loop in a separate server from the sandboxes where their work executes. Integrations with OpenShell and BlueField enable enterprises to enforce strict control over agent access through those sandboxes.
“Companies are giving AI agents more of their most important work, and they need to direct and verify what those agents do, especially in sensitive environments,” said Paul Smith, chief commercial officer of Anthropic. “Claude Managed Agents gives companies a clear view of what each agent is doing, and NVIDIA’s platform adds another layer of governance and control across hardware and software.”