Founder moves

The new directors include two IRL co-founders; Mullenweg said in 2024 that he controls 84% of Automattic’s voting power.

Andrew Schwartz and Bhavik Patel return after Toast acquired xtraCHEF for $48M, with Michael Schulson shaping an agent layer piloting at 100 restaurant locations.

The German indie developer says a September 17th post about plain-language Postgres search changed his life and led to the move.

Cofounder Oleksandr Matsiuk says the arrangement pushed him to roughly double an already aggressive target, turning dissent into a management system.

Anand starts October 2nd, and Disney says several Character.AI engineers are expected to follow him into the newly centralized role.

Inertia's $450M bet pairs Twilio's former CEO with the scientists behind laser ignition, then asks them to industrialize it.

Based in Sunnyvale, de Martel will run finance as Wayve expands supervised robotaxis and prepares automaker integrations.

Automattic's spokesperson called WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg chairman and CEO with the board's full support, but no public board statement documents a formal reinstatement.

The Austin chipmaker is turning January's $110M Series A into hires, facilities and a commercialization bench for a photonic processor due in 2028.

Mullenweg opposed the September 9th vote but remains an Automattic director and a leader of the open-source WordPress project.

The former Chrome developer-experience leader joins Anthropic after Anthropic said Claude Code passed $2.5B in run-rate revenue by May.

The product architect takes over one week after Batti's death as Whatfix expands its enterprise software adoption products with AI agents and simulated training.

Kramer will run global revenue and partnerships as ElevenLabs says enterprise customers account for 55% of sales.

The former Ukrainian defense minister is taking wartime operating experience to market, though the product, funding amount and Palantir's role remain undefined.

Pivotal is pitching public-safety and defense missions alongside personal-aircraft sales, drawing on Ross's aviation and autonomy background.

The investor's live portfolio page identifies Dean as co-founder and CEO, while Discovery Loop's own site still presents four founders without executive titles.

Wilson will keep his NYU group while steering Perplexity work on continual learning, agent collaboration and open research.

Pinner joins after Robinhood separated him from its CTO role in May, as Exa scales the search infrastructure behind AI agents.

Discovery Loop has announced an undisclosed initial round co-led by Khosla Ventures and Radical Ventures as Jeff Dean and three Google veterans build a machine-learning research system first.

The late bid is 25% above Google's, but Spirit's auction record shows privacy terms may matter as much as the extra cash.

Drury says McCartney first invested in the children's audio company in 2019 as Yoto built a card-based business that has reached more than five million children.

Azamat Khamidov and Benazir Toleubekova are applying consumer-scale personalization to the moment a subscriber tries to leave.

Paid users keep access through September 14th; Bank will lead Chrome's product and developer-relations teams.

Lee McIntire inherits Fermi's binding TensorWave lease, 17-gigawatt Project Matador plan and unresolved board dispute.