Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg says he has returned as chief executive officer barely two days after the board of the WordPress.com parent company placed him on paid leave and installed Chief Financial Officer Mark Davies as interim CEO, turning an already extraordinary governance confrontation into an even more unusual leadership reversal. Mullenweg told employees that the board was “back in agreement” and that he was again in control, while WordPress Executive Director Mary Hubbard separately confirmed his return and welcomed the development. Automattic had not issued a fresh public corporate statement confirming the reversal at the time of reporting, making the employee communications the clearest evidence of the change.
The reversal follows an extraordinary September 9 board confrontation. Mullenweg told employees that Davies and directors Ann Dunwoody, Toni Schneider and Sue Decker had acted behind his back to place him on a paid leave of absence, while Automattic subsequently confirmed that Davies would lead the company on an interim basis and said the board had full confidence in him. Mullenweg remained a director and continued to lead the separate open-source WordPress project even while losing day-to-day control of Automattic.
What happened afterward is less transparent. The Verge reported that Davies’ Slack access was deactivated while Mullenweg removed administrative privileges from other Automattic Slack administrators, and Mullenweg told employees that the board had reached a new alignment. The precise board resolution or governance arrangement that produced the reversal has not been publicly released, so it would be premature to conclude that the underlying disagreement has been fully resolved.
That distinction matters because Automattic is not simply another software startup. The private company owns WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, Pocket Casts and other internet businesses while maintaining deep operational and historical links with the wider WordPress ecosystem, making leadership stability relevant to employees, commercial customers, developers and companies whose businesses depend on WordPress infrastructure.
Why did Automattic’s board put Matt Mullenweg on leave in the first place?
Automattic has not publicly explained the substantive reasons behind the original board decision. Mullenweg said he received the resolution approximately 50 minutes before the meeting, sought additional time for independent legal review and voted against his own removal, while the board approved the paid leave and named Davies interim CEO. The company’s original public response confirmed the leadership arrangement but did not explain what conduct, strategic dispute or governance concern prompted it.
That absence of explanation is significant because the decision was not framed as a voluntary sabbatical or orderly succession. The CEO publicly described the action as being imposed against his wishes and accused named board members and the CFO of coordinating it, creating a direct and visible conflict between the founder and part of the company’s governance structure.
The board confrontation also came after two turbulent years around Automattic and WordPress. Mullenweg’s dispute with hosting company WP Engine has led to litigation and divisions inside the WordPress community, while Automattic has repeatedly adjusted its investment and staffing priorities. The company reduced its sponsored contributions to WordPress early in 2025 before resuming core contributions several months later.
None of those events has been publicly identified by Automattic as the cause of the September board vote. They nevertheless provide the organisational context in which directors were evaluating leadership and governance.
Why does the reversal raise more governance questions than a normal CEO reinstatement?
The central problem is speed. A board deciding that a founder should be placed on leave normally implies a material breakdown in confidence, oversight or working relationships. Reversing that position within roughly two days suggests either that circumstances changed extraordinarily quickly or that the original board decision lacked durable consensus.
Mullenweg’s own message that directors were “back in agreement” suggests some form of reconciliation, but it does not explain what changed. It is not yet clear whether Davies remains CFO, whether any board responsibilities changed or whether new governance arrangements have been introduced to prevent another confrontation.
The reported deactivation of Davies’ Slack account creates an additional question because the finance chief had only just been publicly identified by Automattic as the executive in whom the board had full confidence to run the company. A governance structure that can move from CEO removal to founder reinstatement and apparent CFO sidelining within days risks creating uncertainty for senior managers below the board.
For a private company, the market does not provide an immediate share-price verdict on that uncertainty. Customers, partners, employees and investors instead have to judge stability through future executive departures, product decisions and the eventual composition of the board and senior leadership team.
How does Automattic’s recent workforce restructuring add another layer to the leadership dispute?
Automattic has already been through substantial workforce changes. In April 2025, the company announced a restructuring affecting 16% of employees as Mullenweg argued that Automattic needed to improve productivity, profitability and its capacity to invest. Based on the company’s workforce count immediately before the restructuring, the reduction represented more than 270 employees.
That followed a separate 2024 voluntary exit programme under which 159 employees accepted buyouts. Automattic offered departing workers $30,000 or six months of salary, whichever was higher, after internal disagreements intensified around the company’s direction and the WordPress ecosystem.
The company therefore entered the September 2026 governance confrontation with an employee base that had already absorbed substantial organisational change. Leadership instability at the CEO and CFO level can be more disruptive after successive restructurings because employees have fewer reasons to assume another shift will remain confined to the boardroom.
Automattic’s 2025 restructuring announcement said revenue continued growing but that the company needed greater productivity and profitability in an increasingly competitive technology market. The current board conflict has not been linked publicly to those financial objectives, but whoever ultimately controls Automattic still faces the same fundamental requirement to convert a broad portfolio of internet products into a sustainable financial model.
Why is the distinction between Automattic and WordPress particularly important in this story?
Automattic and the WordPress open-source project are closely associated but are not the same organisation. When Mullenweg was placed on leave from Automattic, Hubbard explicitly said he remained the leader of the WordPress project and that WordPress.org priorities and work would continue as planned.
That separation created an unusual situation in which Mullenweg temporarily lost executive control of the commercial company he founded while retaining a central leadership role in the open-source ecosystem around which much of that company’s business is built. WordPress powers a vast network of websites, plugins, hosting companies, agencies and e-commerce businesses, making the distinction commercially important.
Automattic also controls major WordPress-related businesses including WordPress.com and WooCommerce, while WordPress itself remains open-source software supported by contributors from many organisations and individuals. Decisions made inside Automattic can therefore influence the ecosystem without automatically determining every aspect of the open-source project.
Mullenweg’s return brings those leadership roles back into closer alignment. Whether that alignment becomes more stable will depend on whether the boardroom dispute that produced his temporary removal has actually been settled or merely postponed.
What should employees and WordPress businesses watch next?
The most immediate question is the status of Mark Davies. Automattic publicly named the CFO interim CEO when Mullenweg was placed on leave, yet subsequent reporting said his Slack account had been deactivated after Mullenweg returned. A formal clarification of Davies’ role would provide an important signal about whether the reconciliation includes him.
The second issue is board composition and authority. If the same directors who voted to remove Mullenweg remain in place under unchanged governance arrangements, investors and employees may reasonably ask what prevents another leadership confrontation if disagreements re-emerge.
The third issue is executive and employee retention. Automattic has already experienced voluntary departures, layoffs and public disagreements, and another round of senior exits would indicate that the September episode had consequences beyond a short-lived board vote.
For now, the most defensible conclusion is narrow but extraordinary. Automattic’s board removed Matt Mullenweg from the CEO job, the company publicly put Mark Davies in charge, and roughly two days later Mullenweg told employees he was back after the board returned to agreement. The unresolved story is what Automattic had to change internally to make that reversal possible.
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