NVIDIA has announced the NVIDIA OpenShell Reference Architecture, which enables building, containing, observing and enforcing safe agents on enterprise infrastructure and edge systems. The architecture builds on the foundation of NVIDIA OpenShell secure runtime software, extending it into full-stack, industrial-scale infrastructure for agent development and operations.
NVIDIA has announced the OpenShell Reference Architecture for safe AI agents across enterprise infrastructure and edge systems.
It includes Vera Rubin infrastructure for model inference, Vera CPUs for agent harnesses and tool use, open source OpenShell software, and BlueField-4 DPUs running NVIDIA Sentry.
NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 systems deliver 30x higher throughput per megawatt for agentic workloads.
NVIDIA Sentry quarantines and stops an agent in milliseconds if it attempts to move outside its software boundary, and boosts agent capacity by up to 20%.
The architecture runs on leading enterprise operating systems including Canonical, Red Hat, SUSE and Microsoft Windows with Microsoft Execution Containers.
Anthropic, AWS, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Google Cloud, HPE, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Palo Alto Networks, SAP, ServiceNow and Siemens are among those working with the architecture.
"AI capability and safety must advance together," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. "As enterprises prepare to deploy billions of AI agents, safety and control must be built into the computing architecture. NVIDIA created OpenShell to give agents the freedom to do useful work within clearly defined boundaries — contained, monitored and under control. With the OpenShell Reference Architecture, agents can think on Rubin, act on Vera and be governed on BlueField."
The OpenShell Reference Architecture features NVIDIA accelerated computing paired with software for secure agent operations.
NVIDIA Vera Rubin, with NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 infrastructure at its core, is fungible across pretraining, post-training and inference. For agentic workloads, NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 systems deliver 30x higher throughput per megawatt.
NVIDIA Vera CPUs deliver 2x the performance of x86 processors with greater energy efficiency and run NVIDIA OpenShell, which provides a secure runtime boundary for autonomous agents.
NVIDIA BlueField-4 DPUs continuously monitor agent behavior with NVIDIA Sentry, built on NVIDIA DOCA software. BlueField and NVIDIA Sentry together provide in-silicon security enforcement — if an agent attempts to move outside its software boundary, NVIDIA Sentry quarantines and stops it in milliseconds. NVIDIA Sentry boosts agent capacity by up to 20%.
The architecture extends to the edge with NVIDIA RTX Spark, NVIDIA DGX Spark and NVIDIA DGX Station systems across industries such as retail, healthcare, manufacturing, robotics, software development and telecommunications.
The OpenShell Reference Architecture runs on leading enterprise operating systems and container orchestration layers, including Linux and Kubernetes infrastructure powered by Canonical, SUSE and Red Hat, as well as Microsoft Windows using Microsoft Execution Containers. It can run on cloud operating systems from Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.
Enterprises can run agents from model builders including Anthropic, Cohere, Google, Meta, OpenAI, Perplexity, Reflection and SpaceX Super Intelligence on OpenShell infrastructure.
Cybersecurity leaders 1Password, Check Point, CrowdStrike, Cisco, F5, Fortinet, Microsoft, Okta, Palo Alto Networks, TrendAI and Zscaler are integrating support for the OpenShell Reference Architecture into their agent security solutions. Leading banks including Europe's BBVA and Santander are working with NVIDIA to explore the architecture as a framework for strengthening agent safety, security and governance.
Enterprise software leaders Cadence, Dassault Systèmes, IBM, SAP, Siemens and Synopsys are working with OpenShell to build agent software platforms. SAP is integrating the architecture with Joule Studio runtime, part of SAP Business AI Platform. ServiceNow announced the general availability of ServiceNow Arc, a personal long-running AI agent with actions governed at runtime by the ServiceNow Super Intelligence Control Tower and enforced by NVIDIA OpenShell.
NVIDIA system manufacturers Dell Technologies, Cisco, HPE, Lenovo and Supermicro are among those building infrastructure with the OpenShell Reference Architecture, while cloud service providers including CoreWeave, Crusoe, Firebird, Firmus, GMI Cloud, IREN, Lambda, Nebius, Nscale, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Vultr are deploying OpenShell-ready infrastructure.
