TL;DR
- On September 9, 2026, the board of Automattic put founder Matt Mullenweg on paid leave with 50 minutes' notice
- He holds 84% of the votes and returned after 33 hours and 20 minutes. Three directors subsequently left
- During those 33 hours, the interim CEO and the chief legal officer signed each other's severance deals, worth $8.15 million together
- On September 25 a judge revived four antitrust claims against Automattic, and a jury trial is set for October 2027
- Businesses using WordPress should check updates, plugin dependencies and whether they can restore their site from a backup
Automattic's press release about its own CEO ran to one sentence: Matt Mullenweg was away for 33 hours and 20 minutes. The company timed his absence to the minute and has not said why the board acted.
Automattic operates WordPress.com. According to W3Techs, WordPress powered 40.1% of all surveyed websites on October 5, 2026. Its share among websites with an identified content management system was 58.6%.
The 33 hours and 20 minutes
On Wednesday, September 9, the board of Automattic voted to place its founder and CEO on paid leave. The company owns WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, and Beeper. Mullenweg said he got 50 minutes' notice before the vote, asked for time to consult a lawyer, and was refused. The chief financial officer, Mark Davies, took over as interim CEO.
Mullenweg's account was blunt. He accused the CFO of conspiring with three directors behind his back. Those directors were Toni Schneider, who also leads Bluesky, Sue Decker, a former Yahoo president, and Ann Dunwoody, a retired four-star US Army general.
After returning, Mullenweg announced in Slack that he had resumed control. Schneider and Decker resigned. Dunwoody was removed. The interim CEO and the chief legal officer were fired.
Severance agreements worth $8.15 million
During those 33 hours, Davies and the chief legal officer, Andy Missan, each signed the other's severance agreement, effective September 10. The two packages total $8.15 million: a year of salary paid as a lump sum, accelerated equity vesting, and a year of health coverage.
Both men were out of a job once Mullenweg returned. Automattic is now deciding whether to pay those agreements or challenge them in court.
The board has not said what triggered its vote. A week later, employees told a newsletter they still had no explanation, and they worked out that the CFO was gone by noticing his Slack account had gone dark.
Why this matters if your site runs on WordPress
For businesses using WordPress, the relevant question is which services their site depends on.
WordPress.org distributes themes, plugins and updates for many WordPress sites. Mullenweg controls the WordPress.org domain. WordPress.com is Automattic's commercial service; WordPress is the open-source software. They are separate things.
The courts are still involved. On September 25, a federal judge restored four antitrust claims against Automattic, including the argument that a checkbox on WordPress.org, the one asking users to confirm they are not affiliated with a rival host, is illegal tying. A jury trial is scheduled for October 2027. A separate sanctions hearing concerns allegations that messages in Signal, WhatsApp, and Telegram were deleted.
Automattic is worth less on paper than it was in 2021. A BlackRock filing values its shares at $14.33, against an entry price of $85 that year. The company has cut staff and, within two weeks, replaced its finance chief, its legal chief, and its outside trial lawyers.
A WordPress site can move to another host. External services used by plugins need separate checks.
What does not change
Leadership changes do not automatically stop WordPress sites from working. WordPress core uses the GPL, which permits running, modifying and moving the software to another host. The litigation does not revoke that license.
Site maintenance depends on who publishes updates, who provides support and which external services the plugins use. Document those dependencies regardless of the situation at Automattic.
Do these five things this week
Check WordPress updates. Compare the installed version with the official releases. If your host applies updates for you, confirm that it did.
Cut and document your plugins. Each plugin puts you on someone else's schedule. Write down what it does and who publishes it, then note what breaks when it goes missing. Jetpack and Akismet come from Automattic directly.
Restore before you trust a backup. A backup you have never restored proves nothing. Pull one onto a staging address and time how long it takes.
Export your own content. Move your posts, pages, product data, and images into a copy that lives outside the platform, on a schedule you chose.
Ask vendors the awkward question. If this plugin, theme, or hosting account disappeared tomorrow, how long until we are back online, and who decides? Answers that arrive in minutes are worth more than answers that arrive in a meeting.
What happens next
The antitrust trial is scheduled for October 2027. Businesses using WordPress can check updates and access to their own data without waiting for the litigation to conclude.
Start with a test restore. It will show whether you have the data and access needed to get the site running again.
Photo: Matt Mullenweg, founder and CEO of Automattic, at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, photo by Kimberly White for TechCrunch, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
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