Automattic's board puts Matt Mullenweg on leave, names Mark Davies interim CEO

Why it matters

Automattic has separated day-to-day management of its commercial organization from Mullenweg's continuing roles on its board and in WordPress leadership, creating a test of how the company operates with authority divided.

Matt Mullenweg, the founder who spent two decades building Automattic around WordPress, was placed on paid leave on September 9th after losing a board vote he opposed. Automattic CFO Mark Davies will serve as interim CEO, TechCrunch reported, citing company-wide Slack messages and a statement from Automattic.

The decision removes Mullenweg from day-to-day management of Automattic while leaving two important pieces of his authority intact. Davies told employees that Mullenweg would remain on Automattic's board. The WordPress Core handbook continues to identify him as a member of the open-source project's leadership team.

That split reflects the unusual structure Mullenweg assembled over his career. The Houston native studied jazz saxophone before moving to San Francisco for a job at CNET, which hired him because of his work on WordPress. Mullenweg later recalled in an archived WordPress interview that he pitched CNET on a hosted WordPress product. He pursued the idea independently after CNET declined, founding Automattic in 2005.

Automattic eventually grew into the commercial home of WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, Pocket Casts and other publishing and commerce products. Automattic says it employs approximately 1,447 people in 81 countries. It is a privately held software operator built around an open-source project.

The founder voted no

Mullenweg told employees that Davies and directors Ann Dunwoody, Toni Schneider and Sue Decker had "conspired" behind his back to place him on leave, according to the Slack message viewed by TechCrunch and first reported by 404 Media. He said he received the resolution about 50 minutes before the meeting and was denied additional time to seek an independent legal review.

Automattic confirmed the leave in a statement to TechCrunch and said the board had full confidence in Davies and Automattic's ability to execute its priorities. The board's reason for acting was not included in the statement.

The directors who backed the change are not newcomers to Automattic. Dunwoody, a retired U.S. Army four-star general, joined the board in 2018. Decker, a former Yahoo president and CFO, joined in 2020. Schneider ran Automattic from 2006 until 2014, when Mullenweg took over as CEO, and has served on the board since 2006, according to Automattic's board biographies.

Davies brings a different operating profile. He joined Automattic as CFO in 2019 after serving as Vivint's CFO and holding senior positions at Alcoa and Dell. His published biography emphasizes finance, operations, supply chains and large organizational transformations. That background gives the board an interim leader familiar with Automattic's finances and internal machinery, rather than an outside executive arriving cold.

Mullenweg retains influence through his board seat. The WordPress Core handbook also continues to list him among the project's leaders. Davies therefore takes charge of Automattic's day-to-day operations without taking charge of the open-source project that supplies its founding identity and much of its strategic value.

A board break after two years of pressure

The board has not connected the leave to any specific dispute. Automattic enters the transition after an extended period of legal conflict, employee departures and restructuring under Mullenweg, all of which form the operating backdrop without establishing the directors' rationale.

Automattic and WP Engine have been fighting since 2024 over trademarks, contributions to WordPress and control of infrastructure used by the WordPress community. Mullenweg accused WP Engine of benefiting from WordPress without contributing enough resources to the project. WP Engine sued Automattic and Mullenweg, alleging defamation and abuse of power. A federal judge later ordered Mullenweg and Automattic to restore WP Engine's access to WordPress.org resources and the Advanced Custom Fields plugin, as detailed in TechCrunch's chronology of the dispute.

The fight also reached Automattic's workforce. In October 2024, Automattic said 159 employees accepted a severance offer after Mullenweg invited those who disagreed with his direction to leave. In April 2025, Automattic announced a separate 16% workforce reduction, saying it needed to improve productivity, profitability and its capacity to invest.

Those episodes placed Mullenweg's overlapping roles under scrutiny. He led Automattic, sat on its board and remained a central authority at WordPress.org, while Automattic's products competed in the commercial market built around WordPress. The leave narrows that concentration inside Automattic, at least temporarily, but does not reorganize WordPress leadership.

Automattic tests life without its founder as CEO

Mullenweg historically held substantial influence over Automattic's shareholder votes. When he disclosed a $288 million financing in 2021, he wrote that the shares included proxies assigning their voting rights to him. The same post disclosed a $250 million employee-focused share buyback at a $7.5 billion valuation. Those figures describe Automattic in 2021, rather than its current capitalization, but they show how deliberately Mullenweg structured Automattic to preserve founder control.

The September 9th vote showed that Mullenweg's influence did not prevent the board from changing the company's executive leadership. He could vote against the resolution and remain a director, while the other directors still transferred the CEO role to Davies.

Automattic now has two centers of leadership: Davies running the commercial organization and Mullenweg remaining among the leaders of WordPress. That arrangement can preserve continuity in the open-source project while giving Davies room to manage Automattic's finances, workforce and product portfolio. It can also create friction whenever Automattic's commercial interests and WordPress governance overlap, which has happened repeatedly during the WP Engine dispute.

The leave is neither a resignation nor a clean founder exit. Mullenweg remains tied to the institution he built and to the open-source project that made it possible. Davies inherits an organization shaped around its founder's authority, with the immediate task of proving Automattic can operate when that authority is divided.