Last Wednesday, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg was placed on a forced paid leave of absence by the board. He wrote in an announcement on Slack that Automattic CFO Mark Davies “conspired” with board members Ann Dunwoody, Toni Schneider, and Sue Decker “behind my back and they voted to put me on a paid leave of absence. I voted against that.” Davies was voted to be the new interim CEO, effective immediately, though Mullenweg will retain his seat on the board.
Automattic board member and former CEO Toni Schneider (who ran the company from 2006 to 2014 before Mullenweg took the role back) wrote on Slack:
“As you have seen from Matt’s previous messages, Automattic’s board has decided to ask Matt to step away from his CEO role and take a leave of absence… I’m sure you will have many questions and Mark and your leadership team will be available to answer them.”
Since then, it’s been a whirlwind at Automattic. Here’s what’s gone down:
- Wednesday Night – Mullenweg posts on X, “I really need some great sysadmin and security researchers to hire really quick, no one from @automattic ! I’m on the board there and fully support Mark Davies in his interim CEO role. But I think it’s probably good if I move some of my stuff currently hosted there, elsewhere.” Notably, Mullenweg personally owns the WordPress.org domain and infrastructure, which came out during the WP Engine litigation, so hiring sysadmins to move “my stuff” off Automattic servers read to people in the community as a threat to take WordPress.org with him.
- Early Thursday – Mullenweg posts on X that “Things are different than they appear,” and suggests Silver Lake, majority owner of WP Engine, was behind a plan to “destroy” his life, and references that the other side has “a pretty good chance of getting a judge to say I spoiled evidence in a malicious way.” He denies the spoliation allegation.
- Mid Thursday – He removes all Slack admins from Automattic’s Slack.
- Friday – Mullenweg claims he’s back in control. He posted on Slack “Don’t call it a comeback” and linked to LL Cool J’s music video for “Mama Said Knock You Out.” His Slack profile picture showed him wearing a pirate hat and eyepatch. He continued, “Happy to announce the board is back in agreement, and I’m in control of Automattic. A lot happened in the past 48 hours that we need to sort out, and I hope much of it was a misunderstanding, because I have huge respect and regard for those involved.”
- Later Friday – He posts a personal blog update with a “Major Life Announcement” about buying a houseboat.
- Saturday – A company spokesperson shared with TechCrunch via email just after 5 p.m. ET: “Matt Mullenweg is the chairman and CEO of Automattic, with full support of the board” – which may very well have been Mullenweg e-mailing.
- Monday (today) – TechCrunch reported this morning that the board is already out: Schneider resigned his seat, and Mullenweg removed Decker and Dunwoody. Decker’s LinkedIn now shows her term ending September 2026. The Repository reports the CFO and chief legal officer are gone too.
I’ve been following the Matt Mullenweg / Automattic beef since September 2024, when Mullenweg called out WP Engine at the WordCamp US event for not contributing enough to the WordPress open source project, which kicked off an intense public legal battle. You can read this post for a timeline of events to catch yourself up to speed. It’s been quieter since around Nov 2025, which made me assume incorrectly that Mullenweg and Automattic were finally back to running a stable business, to the benefit of the greater WordPress community and ecosystem, but apparently not. The debacle continues.
For now I’ll just say this: None of this is funny. None of this is cute. People’s livelihoods are at stake. Fucking stop the shenanigans already.
