Temporal CEO on AI Agents & The Future of Software | Deep Dives with a16z
a16z Deep Dives · 2026-02-19 · 63 min
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaIiiON5Sj4Video summary
Temporal CEO Samar Abbas says durable execution will underpin long-running AI agents, with cloud handling 150,000 actions per second.
Temporal CEO Samar Abbas explains how durable execution resumes code after failures with its state intact, a capability born from Uber’s microservices sprawl and its Cadence predecessor. He recounts how Uber used workflows for three-day bank retries and loyalty points—and replayed corrupted workflows after a bug erased customer credits. Temporal Cloud offers 99.999% operational SLA, regional failover, and capacity for 150,000 actions per second. Abbas argues that AI is shifting from short interactive sessions to background coding and research agents that need recoverable state, durable RPC, and coordination across specialized agents. Execution histories also provide audit trails and observability, while real-time context increasingly comes from APIs, Slack, and Google Docs. He sees value accruing to APIs and useful applications, not disappearing SaaS, and says Temporal is building integrations and Project Nexus for asynchronous tools. He closes by describing the CEO handoff from cofounder Max and urging founders to prioritize customer value, resilient margins, and focused growth.
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction: Temporal Resumes Failed Work and Processes Restaurant Orders Exactly Once
- 4:03Temporal’s Origin Story: Uber’s Three-Day Tip Retries and Loyalty-Point Recovery
- 11:14Why Agents Raise the Stakes: Multi-Region Failover and an Explosion of AI Apps
- 16:00Specialized Agents Need Durable RPC: From Claude Code Sandboxes to Hundreds of Agents
- 20:01Specialized Agents Need Durable RPC: OpenAI Codex Runs Background Tool Workflows
- 25:20Deep Research Agents: Recoverable Parallel Research and 150,000 Actions per Second
- 30:58Execution Histories as a Superpower: Auditable Agent Workflows and Tool Analytics
- 35:03Execution Histories as a Superpower: APIs, Rising App Traffic, and Temporal’s Integrations
- 39:04Minimal Viable Long-Running Agent Architecture: Sandboxes, Observability, and Enterprise Systems of Record
- 45:07Context Engineering at Scale: Real-Time Retrieval, Large Payloads, and Durable RPC
- 52:40Where Value Accrues: Five-Layer Cake, Abridge, Harvey, and Temporal’s CEO Transition
- 57:26Where Value Accrues: Temporal’s Post-2021 Resilience, Customer Focus, and R&D Raise
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