a16z Leads $300M Series D for Temporal at $5B Valuation, Powering Reliable AI Agent Infrastructure

Temporal, the open-source platform for durable workflow execution, has raised $300 million in a Series D funding round.

The investment, led by a16z, values the Seattle-area startup at a whopping $5 billion.

Temporal's Origins and Technological Edge

Founded in 2019 by CEO Samar Abbas and CTO Maxim Fateev, Temporal evolved from Uber's Cadence project to address complex, fault-tolerant workflows.

The platform enables developers to build resilient applications that automatically recover from failures and maintain state over long durations.

AI Boom Drives Explosive Growth and Demand

In the era of agentic AI, Temporal has seen tremendous growth, with over 380% year-over-year revenue increase and 20 million monthly installs.

AI-native companies have executed 1.86 trillion actions on its cloud, highlighting its role in production-grade AI agents.

Prominent customers including OpenAI, Block, ADP, and Yum! Brands rely on Temporal for mission-critical processes.

“Agentic AI doesn’t fail because the models aren’t good enough. It fails because the systems around them can’t handle real-world execution,” said Abbas.

a16z emphasized that Temporal's durability turns AI demos into scalable production systems.

With prior rounds totaling around $650 million from investors like Sequoia and Index, this funding doubles the prior $2.5 billion valuation.

Looking ahead, Temporal plans to enhance its cloud platform, advance open-source innovations, and solidify its position as AI infrastructure backbone.

This raise underscores the surging need for reliable execution layers amid the agentic AI revolution.