Temporal Lands Raises $146M to Expand Agentic AI

Temporal Secures $146 Million to Fuel AI-Driven Microservices Development

Seattle-based Temporal, a company specializing in microservices orchestration, has recently completed a growth funding round of $146 million. This investment will be strategically allocated to advance the company’s focus on artificial intelligence, particularly in the realm of agentic AI and the supporting microservices infrastructure.

Investment Allocation and Platform Enhancements

A significant portion of the newly acquired capital will be directed towards research and development initiatives. Temporal launched Nexus, a new feature within its Temporal Cloud platform, late in 2024, designed to bolster security, fault isolation, and modularity. Continued development of Nexus is planned, alongside expanding public cloud availability to include Azure, facilitating more comprehensive cross-cloud operations.

Furthermore, funds will be invested in bolstering sales and marketing efforts to broaden the company’s reach and market penetration.

Funding Details and Valuation

Tiger Global spearheaded the investment round, with participation from existing investors, including Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital. This Series C funding brings Temporal’s total raised capital to $350 million.

The company’s post-money valuation following this round is reported to be $1.72 billion, representing a modest increase. Previously, a $75 million Series B extension in February 2023 valued the company at $1.5 billion.

Reports indicated a valuation dip to as low as $880 million prior to the Series B extension, though this figure remains unconfirmed by the company.

Origins and Core Technology

Temporal was founded by Samar Abbas and Maxim Fateev, who previously collaborated at Uber. There, they co-created Cadence, an open-source orchestration engine for managing interactions between microservices.

Recognizing the widespread need for improved microservices management, they established Temporal to provide a dedicated platform for this purpose.

Microservices Orchestration: Before and After AI

Temporal’s microservices orchestration platform has been available since 2019, assisting clients in managing functions and data integration across various applications. These include processes like payment processing, customer onboarding, and ID verification.

The Rise of Agentic AI and Microservices

The emergence of agentic AI – leveraging language models to work across multiple services – has created a significant new use case for microservices. These AI “agents” require robust orchestration to function effectively.

Notable Clients and Partnerships

Temporal’s client base includes prominent companies such as Box, Instacart, Snap, Stripe, and Nvidia.

Nvidia’s inclusion is particularly noteworthy, as the GPU manufacturer recently unveiled NIM, a microservices platform designed to streamline the deployment of AI models. Nvidia is utilizing microservices to develop AI agents focused on trust and safety.

Growth and Future Outlook

Temporal reports a 4.4x revenue increase over the past 18 months, although this represents a deceleration from the 20x growth experienced in the year leading up to February 2023.

The Temporal.io open-source platform boasts 183,000 active users, while the enterprise-level Temporal Cloud service serves 2,500 customers.

While “durable execution” may not garner the same attention as generative AI, the need for reliable workflow execution remains critical. Competitors in this space include Restate and Orkes.

Leadership and Expansion Plans

Samar Abbas assumed the role of CEO in April of the previous year, with Maxim Fateev transitioning to Chief Technology Officer, focusing on long-term vision.

Temporal plans to expand its workforce from 250 to over 300 employees and increase its presence in EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) and the Asia-Pacific & Japan regions.