Automattic replaces its board after Mullenweg’s 33-hour ouster

Why it matters

Mullenweg has rebuilt Automattic’s board after returning from a leave vote he could reverse through his control of 84% of the company’s voting power, concentrating the governance fight around the founder’s authority.

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt) has installed a new board weeks after directors voted to put him on leave, a move that briefly handed leadership to the company’s chief financial officer. TechCrunch reported Friday that Mullenweg told employees about the appointments in Automattic’s Slack announcements channel.

The roster brings together science-fiction writer Hugh Howey, author Amy Chan, and former IRL co-founders Genrikh “Henry” Khachatryan and Krutal Desai. Mullenweg described Khachatryan as “a founder and builder,” according to TechCrunch. The board’s varied backgrounds make the appointments a personnel reset as well as a governance decision: the directors replacing the previous board are entering after a failed intervention, with Mullenweg back in charge.

The timing is unusually compressed. On September 9th, Automattic’s board voted to place Mullenweg on paid leave and named CFO Mark Davies interim CEO. Mullenweg returned roughly 33 hours later. Automattic told TechCrunch the leave lasted exactly 33 hours and 20 minutes. By September 14th, TechCrunch had reported that the directors involved in the vote had left: Toni Schneider resigned, Mullenweg removed Gen. Ann Dunwoody, and Sue Decker also resigned. Davies and Chief Legal Officer Andy Missan left the company as well.

That sequence left Mullenweg with the power to rebuild the board after the attempted removal failed. At TechCrunch Disrupt in 2024, he said he controlled 84% of Automattic’s voting power. The new lineup therefore takes shape under a founder whose voting control gives him the ability to determine who sits around the board table. Automattic’s internal message, as reported by TechCrunch, also quoted Mullenweg saying that “for purposes of Delaware law, I am the CEO, President, Treasurer, and Secretary.”

The new directors include people with very different company-building records. Howey’s author biography describes a career built around the independently published “Wool” novel that became the “Silo” series. Chan is the author of “Breakup Bootcamp.” The two IRL co-founders bring a more direct startup history: IRL, a social app, shut down in 2023 after a company investigation found that about 95% of its claimed user base was automated or made up of bots. The company’s founders later sued investors, contesting their role in the shutdown and the bot findings. Those events are part of IRL’s record; they do not establish why Mullenweg chose either founder for Automattic’s board.

The appointments follow a board dispute whose consequences extended beyond the CEO’s temporary leave. Automattic also lost its CFO and legal chief, and Mullenweg replaced the company’s litigation counsel, according to TechCrunch’s reporting. The company is fighting WP Engine in a trademark and open-source contribution dispute. In July, WP Engine accused Mullenweg of destroying evidence in the case, a claim TechCrunch says was made in court filings. That allegation is part of the litigation, not an established finding about the board fight.

Automattic’s board reset does not itself resolve the governance question raised by the September vote: how much practical oversight a board can exercise when its founder controls the company’s voting power and can replace directors after they move against him. Mullenweg told staff the attempted removal had brought him “many amazing supporters,” and called the recent board meeting the company’s most interesting in a decade. The new directors now take their seats in a company where the failed leave vote has already shown the limits of board authority when the founder retains decisive voting control.

Automattic’s brands include WordPress.com, Tumblr and WooCommerce. Its board choices matter beyond the company because WordPress is open-source software used by a broad community of developers and site owners, while Automattic is a commercial operator built around products and services connected to that software. The board announcement changes who will advise and oversee Mullenweg inside Automattic; it does not settle the separate dispute over how his commercial company and the open-source project should relate.