Running reasoning and agentic AI at the edge has been harder than it needs to be. Until recently, models capable of multi-step reasoning were too large to run locally on edge hardware. Developers building agents have had to route inference through a data center, adding network dependency, increasing costs, and exposing data that may need to stay on device.

That constraint is lifting. Several model families released throughout the summer have collectively marked a turning point for edge AI. This new generation of compact open models now delivers reasoning and agentic capabilities that required large data center systems only a few months ago, and NVIDIA Jetson can run them today.

This could power in-cab assistants, real-time anomaly detection, and robots working in harsh or remote environments.…