Matt Mullenweg, the founder and CEO of Automattic, best known as the parent company of WordPress.com, has been put on a leave of absence by his board against his will, according to a Slack message seen by TechCrunch. Earlier Wednesday, Mullenweg posted in a Slack channel visible to all employees that the company’s Chief Financial Officer, Mark Davies, had “conspired” with other board members Ann Dunwoody, Toni Schneider, and Sue Decker to vote to put Mullenweg on a paid leave of absence. And the biggest news: I won’t be able to make the [meeting] tomorrow. @Mark Davies has conspired with @Ann Dunwoody, @Toni, and @Sue Decker behind my back and they voted to put me on a paid leave of absence.
Wishing Mark and all of you the very best.To clarify @Mark Davies was voted as interim CEO. I received the resolution 50 minutes before the meeting start, and requested repeatedly for time to have it reviewed by independent legal counsel, even a few hours, which was denied. A Slack message to the open-source WordPress.org community from the project’s executive director, Mary Hubbard, also confirmed Mullenweg’s change of status at the commercial company.
However, Hubbard said that WordPress.org was not impacted. Our teams, priorities, and work continue as planned,” she wrote. Mullenweg’s Slack message did not make clear why Automattic’s board took this action.
Sources told 404 Media, which was the first to report the news, that Schneider — the former CEO of Automattic from 2006 to 2014 — confirmed that the action was initiated by the board. Davies also told employees in the Slack channel that Mullenweg remained on the board of directors. In an emailed statement to TechCrunch, Automattic confirmed Mullenweg was on leave.
The Board has full confidence in Mark’s leadership and in the team’s ability to execute against the company’s priorities.” Automattic, which owns other brands including Tumblr, WooCommerce, and Pocket Casts, was founded by Mullenweg in 2003 after he co-created the popular open-source content management system WordPress. Over the past few years, Mullenweg and the company have been mired in lawsuits and controversy. The company is in a protracted legal battle with WP Engine, a WordPress web hosting competitor.
The lawsuit followed allegations from Mullenweg that WP Engine was profiting from the open-source WordPress project without contributing back to the community, and he demanded it pay 8% of its monthly gross revenue as a royalty fee for using the WordPress brand. WP Engine sued in October 2024, and accused Automattic and Mullenweg of defamation and abuse of power. Automattic filed counterclaims last year.
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