Temporal CEO on AI Agents & The Future of Software | Deep Dives with a16z

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Sarah Wang, general partner at a16z, and Raghu Raghuram, managing partner at a16z, speak with Samar Abbas, CEO of Temporal, about how durable execution became the infrastructure layer behind the world's most used AI agents. They cover why long-running agents need state management and recoverability, how Temporal powers OpenAI's Codex and Snap's story processing, and why the shift from interactive to background agents is creating distributed systems problems at a scale that didn't exist two years ago. 00:00 Introduction 04:03 Temporal’s Origin Story 11:14 Why Agents Raise the Stakes 16:00 Specialized Agents Need Durable RPC 25:20 Deep Research Agents 30:58 Execution Histories as a Superpower 39:04 Minimal Viable Long-Running Agent Architecture 45:07 Context Engineering at Scale 52:40 Where Value Accrues: The “Five-Layer Cake” and Breakout AI Applications Read the full transcript here: https://www.a16z.news/s/podcast Follow Sarah Wang, general partner at a16z Raghu Raghuram, managing partner at a16z Samar Abbas, cofounder & CEO at Temporal Stay Updated: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends! Find a16z on X: https://twitter.com/a16z Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYX Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711 Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see http://a16z.com/disclosures.