Matt Mullenweg Says He Is Back in Control of Automattic After Board Ouster

Matt Mullenweg says he has regained control of Automattic, days after the company’s board moved to place the WordPress co-founder on paid leave and install Chief Financial Officer Mark Davies as interim CEO.

Mullenweg told employees in Automattic’s Slack early Friday that the board was “back in agreement” and that he was again in control of the company, which operates WordPress.com. Automattic had not publicly confirmed the leadership change as of the source report.

“(Don’t call it a comeback…) Howdy everybody! Happy to announce the board is back in agreement, and I’m in control of Automattic,” Mullenweg wrote in the message. He said a lot had happened in the previous 48 hours and hoped much of the dispute was a misunderstanding.

Mullenweg also shared LL Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out” with employees. A later public post from Mullenweg added to the stream of messages surrounding the leadership fight.

Board dispute followed surprise leave decision.

The turmoil became public Wednesday, when Mullenweg told employees that Automattic board members had “conspired” behind his back and voted to place him on paid leave. 404 Media first reported the leave decision, citing Mullenweg’s company-wide Slack message.

Davies was named interim CEO as part of the board action, Mullenweg said. By Friday, however, sources said Davies’ Slack account had been deactivated, while employees had not received a separate confirmation from the board that Mullenweg had formally returned as CEO.

The situation inside Automattic also appeared unusually unsettled. Mullenweg reportedly removed other administrators from the company Slack and posted a message describing himself as a “pirate” that included profanity. His use of that language stood out because Mullenweg has previously discussed his deliberate preference not to curse.

Mullenweg had also said that a blog post was coming in response to questions about the situation. The post that followed instead announced that he had offered to buy the houseboat Mirene.

Mullenweg signalled he would challenge the decision

In the hours after his removal, Mullenweg used social media to suggest that the leadership dispute was not settled. He wrote on X that “Things are different than they appear” and separately sought systems administrators and security researchers to help move some of his material hosted at Automattic elsewhere.

Despite the conflict, Mullenweg also publicly supported Davies during the transition in another post on X.

On Reddit, where users were discussing what the upheaval could mean for WordPress and the broader open-source community, Mullenweg