Matt Mullenweg Reclaims Automattic’s Top Job After Board Dispute

Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Tumblr, and WooCommerce, says co-founder Matt Mullenweg has resumed the roles of chairman and chief executive, ending an internal standoff during which board members reportedly sought to remove him. In a statement, the company said Mullenweg is back “with full support of the board.”

The episode marks the latest turbulence for a company that sits at the center of the open-source web. Automattic maintains WordPress.org, the software that powers a large share of websites worldwide, and any instability in its leadership draws close attention from the developer community and enterprise customers who rely on its platforms.

Mullenweg, who co-created WordPress as a teenager and founded Automattic in 2005, has historically served in the CEO role, and his grip on the company has shaped its strategy across publishing, e-commerce, and social tools. The attempted leadership change, first reported by TechCrunch, suggests divisions among directors over the company’s direction, though neither the board nor Mullenweg has detailed the specific disagreements.

Because Automattic remains privately held, the leadership news will not move public markets directly. The company last publicly disclosed a $7.5 billion valuation following a 2021 funding round, but its current financial position and ownership structure have not been updated in detail. Investors seeking exposure to the broader technology sector generally track related public companies instead; for example, Ouster, Inc. (OUST), a lidar sensor maker in the electronic components space, last traded at $36.43, up 0.69% from its previous close of $36.18, with a market capitalization near $3.07 billion — a reminder that much of the tech sector’s daily action lies outside private firms like Automattic.

For WordPress’s vast ecosystem of agencies, plugin developers, and hosting partners, the immediate question is continuity: whether Automattic’s roadmap, including its push into AI-assisted publishing tools and its ongoing stewardship of the WordPress open-source project, will remain unchanged under a re-entrenched founder-CEO.

What to watch

• Any formal statement from Automattic clarifying board composition following the dispute.
• Updates to WordPress.org governance or plugin ecosystem policies that may signal strategic shifts.
• Automattic’s next product announcements or funding disclosures, which would confirm its private-market standing.
• Follow-on reporting on whether any executives or directors departed during the episode.

Source: original release