Automattic Board Places CEO Matt Mullenweg On Paid Leave
The board moved the co-developer of WordPress out of the CEO seat at the company he founded while leaving him on the board, so the split between Automattic's for-profit leadership and the WordPress project is now a written arrangement rather than a question.
Reporting from 1 source: GIGAZINE.
Automattic's board placed CEO Matt Mullenweg on paid leave on September 9, 2026. Mullenweg told employees on Slack that CFO Mark Davies and board members Ann Dunwoody, Tony Schneider, and Sue Decker voted the resolution through against his vote, and that he received it 50 minutes before the meeting. Davies is interim CEO. WordPress.org executive director Mary Hubbard said the open-source project is unaffected.
Mullenweg posted the news himself in a Slack channel all Automattic employees can read, naming Davies, Dunwoody, Schneider, and Decker as the votes behind the resolution and saying he asked for time to have an independent lawyer review it. He voted against it. Davies told staff Mullenweg stays on the board.
WordPress.org executive director Mary Hubbard told the community that Mullenweg remains the leader of the WordPress project and that team, priorities, and operations continue as planned. Automattic told TechCrunch the board has full confidence in Davies as interim CEO.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.