Matt Mullenweg back as Automattic CEO days after board vote removed him

Mullenweg confirmed back at the top

Automattic has confirmed that WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg is once again chairman and CEO of the company, closing out one of the stranger governance episodes at a major technology firm in recent memory. According to TechCrunch, a company spokesperson said in an emailed statement on Saturday evening that Mullenweg holds both roles "with full support of the board," and pointed to supportive posts from executives and employees online.

The confirmation came just days after the opposite appeared to be true.

A board vote that didn't stick

Earlier in the week, Automattic's board voted to place Mullenweg on a paid leave of absence, for reasons that were never made public. The move appeared to catch Mullenweg by surprise; according to TechCrunch, he posted in the company's Slack accusing board members of "conspiring" against him.

On Wednesday, Automattic told TechCrunch that Mullenweg was "currently on leave" and that Chief Financial Officer Mark Davies would lead as interim CEO with the board's "full confidence."

That plan then unravelled. Multiple sources told TechCrunch that Mullenweg declined to depart: he removed other administrators from the company Slack and told employees that everything had been worked out and that he was back in control of Automattic. At one point he declared "I'm a pirate now" and cursed — notable, TechCrunch points out, because profanity was famously out of character for him. He also wrote that if his behavior was an HR problem, someone should "wrangle me in," since his usual wranglers were now with Davies.

A houseboat post instead of an explanation

Mullenweg never issued a formal statement about his return. When TechCrunch asked whether his claims of being back were legitimate, he promised a blog post was coming; when it arrived, it was about him buying a houseboat. Asked whether his earlier comments were trolling, he replied that he was not a troll but "obviously" a pirate. On X, he suggested this was likely the fifth time he had faced a "coup."

Questions the company hasn't answered

Several threads remain loose. TechCrunch reports hearing that board member Toni Schneider — Automattic's founding CEO, who now leads Bluesky — has stepped down, but neither Schneider nor Automattic has confirmed this. Schneider did not respond to requests for comment sent to his personal email or via Bluesky. The company also did not reply to repeated requests for comment on Friday, and TechCrunch says the board's composition may still be in flux.

What prompted the original vote to remove Mullenweg remains unknown.

Why it matters

Automattic is the parent company of WordPress.com and one of the most important commercial actors in the WordPress ecosystem, which underpins an enormous share of the web. A week in which a board votes a founder-CEO out, the founder refuses to leave, retakes the company's internal channels, and is then reinstated with the board's "full support" raises real questions about how governance functions there in practice.

For customers, contributors to the open-source project, and employees, the absence of any public explanation — combined with an apparently still-shifting board — leaves the most basic question unanswered: who is actually in charge, and by what authority. Until Automattic explains what happened and why, the episode will continue to fuel doubts about the stability and accountability of an organization that much of the web depends on.