Temporal 5x’d AI spend and doubled revenue. CEO Samar Abbas says he can’t prove they’re connected.

In the final weeks of the year, Temporal, a company focused on reliable execution for long-running software, takes a reading period with no meetings, allowing employees to explore, learn, and build. During this time, co-founder and CTO Maxim Fateev dedicated his efforts to coding agents, demonstrating significant progress in reducing the time required for complex tasks.

Temporal's CEO, Samar Abbas, attributes this shift to setting the company's AI posture for the year. As a result, Abbas redirected the company's efforts toward "AI for Temporal," a project aimed at proving that agentic AI can be reliable for everyone. Temporal specializes in durable execution, providing workflow technology to companies like Nvidia and Netflix, which cannot afford downtime.

In February, the company raised $300 million at a $5 billion valuation, promising to make agentic AI reliable. Abbas, who swapped roles with now-CTO Fateev in 2024, believes the company needs to demonstrate AI reliability first. He emphasizes that AI adoption is not just an engineering requirement but a transformation that needs to happen across the entire company.

Abbas expects every employee to examine their daily workflow, adopt new tools, and change how they work, emphasizing that this is not optional. While Temporal does not mandate specific products, it expects employees to adopt tools that improve their work. The company spends to unlock new work, not to reduce headcount, and it refrains from ranking employees based on usage.

Abbas aims to turn experimental without turning reckless, highlighting the cultural shift required to achieve AI reliability.