Nvidia (NVDA) and ServiceNow (NOW) are joining together to launch ServiceNow’s new Project Arc, an enterprise AI agent similar to the popular OpenClaw platform that lives on users’ desktops rather than in the cloud.
Desktop-based AI agents benefit from having access to all of the content on a user’s machine without having to access the web. OpenClaw, which launched in November, helped popularize the format and quickly gained traction around the globe.
Now that so many people use desktop-based agents, companies have to decide whether they want to allow their employees access to the technology or cut them off entirely.
That’s because while desktop agents can prove incredibly helpful and efficient, they also carry the risk of accidentally uploading proprietary content to the web or taking actions on their own that could delete huge amounts of data.
That’s where ServiceNow says Project Arc comes in.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang speaks during an Nvidia conference focusing on artificial intelligence in San Jose, Calif., Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez) · ASSOCIATED PRESS
“We went and built our own AI agent for the desktop that can write code that can run these long-running processes in the background, but we needed a way to secure that,” explained Jon Sigler, executive vice president and general manager for AI Platform at ServiceNow. “And in comes Nvidia … they have something called OpenShell, and that allowed us to run our agent in their sandbox, preventing it from doing things that it shouldn’t be doing.”
Nvidia’s OpenShell is a sandboxed platform that lets users run agents like Project Arc without fearing that they’ll take actions that could impact your computer.
“We’re talking about … a safe runtime that can run any agent. It can run Claude Codex, it can run OpenClaw, it can run any of the agent families,” Justin Boitano, vice president of enterprise AI platforms at Nvidia, explained.
According to Sigler, Project Arc also takes advantage of ServiceNow’s AI Control Tower platform, which monitors actions agents take and tracks their overall behavior and files they read, as well as commands they execute.
The idea is to allow users to run Project Arc knowing that it is largely controlled across their various computers.
Project Arc also connects to ServiceNow’s Action Fabric software, giving it information about your company’s workflows, systems, and more, ensuring agents abide by an enterprise’s existing operating procedures.
Systems like Project Arc and Nvidia’s OpenShell are becoming increasingly important as more companies test and adopt desktop-based AI agents.
Boitano said security teams refer to agents without security safeguards as a “lethal trifecta,” owing to the fact that they have access to private data, can be exposed to untrusted content, and be prompted to communicate with the world outside of a desktop system.