Abhishek Bhardwaj

Abhishek Bhardwaj built Arrakis, a sandbox system for AI agents that combines isolated code execution with the ability to restore earlier execution states. The AI Engineer WF 2026 speaker record identifies him as @abshkbh, working in Agent Infrastructure at OpenAI at the time of the event.[2][4]

Arrakis addresses two problems in agent execution: generated code can be malicious or buggy, and agents carrying out multistep plans can benefit from returning to an intermediate state. These concerns shape its isolation and snapshot mechanisms.[4]

Each Arrakis sandbox runs in a microVM, using cloud-hypervisor as its virtual machine manager. Its security design isolates untrusted code from the host machine and other agents, while overlayfs protects each sandbox’s root filesystem.[4]

Arrakis documents snapshot-and-restore as a way to preserve an execution state and return to it later, including spawned processes and modified files. This gives an agent a mechanism for backtracking after doing work. The project identifies Monte Carlo Tree Search–based agents and explanations of elaborate execution flows as potential uses.[4]

Before his 2026 OpenAI conference affiliation, Bhardwaj’s personal career timeline lists a Staff Software Engineer, Platform and AI Infrastructure role at Replit during 2023–2024. That earlier role places platform and AI infrastructure work in his career before his later agent-infrastructure affiliation.[3][2]