Founder moves — Page 3
Who's joining, leaving, starting up.
- Automattic says Matt Mullenweg is CEO again after board-ordered leave
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.
- Neurophos hires a Kymeta founder to commercialize its 2028 photonic chip
The Austin chipmaker is turning January's $110M Series A into hires, facilities and a commercialization bench for a photonic processor due in 2028.
- Automattic's board puts Matt Mullenweg on leave, names Mark Davies interim CEO
Mullenweg opposed the September 9th vote but remains an Automattic director and a leader of the open-source WordPress project.
- Anthropic hires Chrome veteran Addy Osmani to improve Claude Code
The former Chrome developer-experience leader joins Anthropic after Anthropic said Claude Code passed $2.5B in run-rate revenue by May.
- Whatfix appoints co-founder Vara Kumar CEO after Khadim Batti's death
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.
- ElevenLabs hires OpenAI VP Ashley Kramer as its first revenue chief
Kramer will run global revenue and partnerships as ElevenLabs says enterprise customers account for 55% of sales.
- Mykhailo Fedorov launches unnamed defense startup with Alex Karp set to invest
The former Ukrainian defense minister is taking wartime operating experience to market, though the product, funding amount and Palantir's role remain undefined.
- Pivotal names Navy test pilot Mike Ross interim CEO after Karklin exits
Pivotal is pitching public-safety and defense missions alongside personal-aircraft sales, drawing on Ross's aviation and autonomy background.
- Radical Ventures lists Jeff Dean as Discovery Loop's CEO
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.
- Perplexity hires NYU professor Andrew Gordon Wilson to lead research
Wilson will keep his NYU group while steering Perplexity work on continual learning, agent collaboration and open research.
- Exa hires Jeff Pinner after his Robinhood CTO role
Pinner joins after Robinhood separated him from its CTO role in May, as Exa scales the search infrastructure behind AI agents.
- Khosla backs Jeff Dean's plan to automate science, starting with AI research
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.
- Micro1's Ali Ansari offers $12.5M for Spirit's data after Google's auction win
The late bid is 25% above Google's, but Spirit's auction record shows privacy terms may matter as much as the extra cash.
- Ben Drury says Paul McCartney invested in Yoto three times since 2019
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.
- Sirius emerges from a16z Speedrun selling AI for the cancel button
Azamat Khamidov and Benazir Toleubekova are applying consumer-scale personalization to the moment a subscriber tries to leave.
- Relay shuts down; founder Jacob Bank returns to Google as Chrome VP
Paid users keep access through September 14th; Bank will lead Chrome's product and developer-relations teams.
- Lee McIntire takes Fermi CEO role as Texas AI power campus moves to buildout
Lee McIntire inherits Fermi's binding TensorWave lease, 17-gigawatt Project Matador plan and unresolved board dispute.
- Nikita Bier steps back after 400 days; Zuckerberg and Bosworth keep shipping
Bier called his 400-day X tenure a "24/7 job." Zuckerberg and Bosworth have spent nearly two decades shipping through Meta's technical failures, political crises and regulatory punishment.
- Atoms hires Gautam Gupta as CFO after $1.7B funding round
Gupta is leaving venture firm A* to oversee finances across Travis Kalanick's food, mining and transportation automation businesses.
- Nikita Bier steps back from leading product at X
The founder of tbh and Gas will remain an adviser after spending just over 13 months directing product at Elon Musk's social platform.
- Naomi Bashkansky left OpenAI for Conduit's telepathy bet
The former alignment researcher joined a San Francisco team training models on thousands of hours of non-invasive neural recordings.
- Yann LeCun joins 224 Ventures as AI investment firm launches with $100M-plus
The AI-focused investment operation is launching with more than $100 million in assets under management, according to Bloomberg.
- Anthropic appoints Tino Cuellar as chief global affairs officer
Anthropic says the former California Supreme Court justice will lead policy, strategic international engagement and government relationships worldwide.
- Adi Prasad brings Tesla and CloudKitchens lessons to Matter's AI factories
The Tesla, Apple, CloudKitchens and Rivian veteran is applying first-principles engineering and zero-based budgeting inside a Sunnyvale plant.