Startups > Temporal

Temporal

Temporal helps developers build reliable, durable workflows that survive failures automatically.

Series D $650M total Founded 2019 Bellevue, Washington 420 employees

Temporal is an open-source durable execution platform that guarantees reliable execution of long-running workflows by automatically tracking progress and enabling recovery from failures. It eliminates the need for custom retry logic, error handling, and state management by providing an Event History that logs every step of execution. Companies like Snap, Coinbase, Netflix, and Airbnb use Temporal to power mission-critical workflows at scale, from processing transactions to managing bookings.

Problem solved

Engineering teams spend significant effort building custom retry logic, error handling, and state management for long-running workflows instead of focusing on business logic.

Target customer

Enterprise and growth-stage B2B SaaS, fintech, and high-scale platforms with long-running, mission-critical application workflows (Series B+ companies processing high transaction volumes).

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Founders

Samar Abbas

CEO

Created Azure Durable Task Framework at Microsoft; co-created Cadence workflow engine at Uber in 2015; previously worked at Amazon.

Maxim Fateev

CTO

Led development of Amazon SQS messaging infrastructure in 2004; co-launched AWS Simple Workflow Service; co-created Cadence at Uber; holds MS in Computer Science from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Funding history

Seed $6.75M 2020 Led by Amplify Partners · Unknown

Series A Unknown October 2020 Led by Madrona · Unknown

Series B Unknown February 2022 Led by Index Ventures · Greenoaks

Series B-Prime $75M February 2023 Led by Unknown · Unknown

Series C $146M March 2025 Led by Tiger Global · Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, MongoDB

Secondary $105M October 2025 Led by GIC · Tiger Global, Index Ventures

Series D $300M February 2026 Led by Andreessen Horowitz · Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sapphire Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures, Tiger Global, GIC, Madrona, Amplify

Total raised: $650M

Industries

Information Technology Internet Open Source Software

Pricing

Freemium model: Open-source platform available under MIT license (free). Managed cloud service operates on pay-per-use pricing model. Enterprise custom pricing available.

Notable customers

Snap, Coinbase, Airbnb, Netflix, Stripe, OpenAI, Hashicorp, ADP, Yum! Brands, Block, Datadog, Glovo, Indeed, Qualtrics, Remitly, Turo, Alaska Airlines, Nvidia, Descript

Integrations

DocuSign, Contentful, Salesforce, Google Workspace, AWS, Vercel

Tech stack

GSAP (JavaScript frameworks) React (JavaScript frameworks) web-vitals (JavaScript libraries) Next.js (Web servers) Mapbox GL JS (Maps) Prism (UI frameworks) Open Graph Module Federation DocuSign Contentful (CMS) Linkedin Insight Tag (Analytics) Google Analytics (Analytics) FullStory (Analytics) reCAPTCHA (Security) HSTS (Security) Font Awesome (Font scripts) Google Font API (Font scripts) Node.js (Programming languages) Google Workspace (Email) Unpkg (CDN) Marketo (Marketing automation) Google Tag Manager (Tag managers) Salesforce (CRM) Vercel (PaaS) Amazon Web Services (PaaS)

Website

temporal.io/

Competitors

Cadence

Direct predecessor developed at Uber; Temporal is the modernized, open-source evolution with broader ecosystem adoption and commercial support.

Camunda

Broader workflow and decision automation platform; Temporal is more developer-focused and specialized for durable execution at high scale.

Apache Airflow

Data pipeline orchestration tool; Temporal handles general-purpose long-running workflows with stronger durability guarantees and failure recovery.

Argo Workflows

Kubernetes-native orchestration for parallel jobs; Temporal is language-agnostic and designed for application-level durable execution.

Why this matters: Temporal has achieved rare scale in developer infrastructure with $650M in funding and 1,000+ customers including top-tier companies (Netflix, Stripe, Snap, Coinbase). It represents a fundamental shift in how companies build reliable distributed systems, eliminating entire categories of engineering work around failure handling.

Best for: Engineering teams at scale-ups and enterprises building mission-critical, long-running workflows that must survive infrastructure failures without custom error handling code.

Use cases

Payment and Transaction Processing

Financial platforms use Temporal to reliably process millions of transactions (e.g., Coinbase for crypto transactions, Stripe for capital decisions). If a service fails mid-transaction, Temporal's Event History allows the system to resume exactly where it left off without data loss or duplicate processing.

User-Generated Content Pipeline

Social platforms like Snap use Temporal to power every story upload, managing multi-step workflows including compression, validation, storage, and distribution. The durable execution ensures no content is lost even if individual steps fail across distributed infrastructure.

Booking and Reservation Systems

Travel and hospitality platforms (e.g., Airbnb) use Temporal to manage complex booking workflows with payment processing, inventory updates, and notifications. Durability guarantees mean partial bookings never get stranded in inconsistent states.

Infrastructure Automation

Companies like HashiCorp use Temporal for infrastructure provisioning workflows that span multiple systems and external APIs. The platform handles retries and partial failures automatically, eliminating manual intervention for failed deployments.

Alternatives

Cadence Open-source predecessor; less mature ecosystem and commercial support compared to Temporal's enterprise-grade managed offering.

AWS Step Functions AWS-native service; tightly coupled to AWS ecosystem; Temporal is cloud-agnostic and more flexible for complex application logic.

Apache Airflow Purpose-built for data pipeline orchestration; Temporal is more general-purpose for any long-running application workflow.

Prefect Modern data workflow platform with Python-first design; Temporal supports polyglot development and general workflow use cases beyond data pipelines.

FAQ

What does Temporal do? +

Temporal is a durable execution platform that reliably runs long-running workflows by automatically handling failures, retries, and state management. It uses an Event History to track every step of execution, allowing systems to resume exactly where they left off after crashes or outages. Developers write simple workflow logic without worrying about infrastructure failures.

How much does Temporal cost? +

Temporal is free and open-source under the MIT license. The managed cloud service (Temporal Cloud) uses a pay-per-use pricing model. Enterprise customers contact sales for custom pricing.

What are alternatives to Temporal? +

AWS Step Functions (AWS-native orchestration), Apache Airflow (data pipeline focus), Cadence (open-source predecessor), Camunda (broader workflow automation), and Prefect (Python-focused data workflows).

Who uses Temporal? +

Over 1,000 customers including Snap, Coinbase, Netflix, Stripe, Airbnb, OpenAI, Hashicorp, and Block. Target customers are enterprise and growth-stage companies running mission-critical, high-volume workflows.

How does Temporal compare to Cadence? +

Temporal is the modern, open-source evolution of Cadence (Temporal's founders created Cadence at Uber). Temporal has broader adoption, better developer experience, enterprise-grade tooling, and a managed cloud service. Cadence remains available but lacks the ecosystem and commercial support of Temporal.