33 Hours: How Matt Mullenweg Reversed a Board Coup at Automattic

By Grace Kim

On Sept. 9, the six-member board of Automattic — the company that owns WordPress, Tumblr and other web apps — voted to put its CEO, Matt Mullenweg, on paid leave. Thirty-three hours later, Mullenweg was back in control, and the three directors who tried to sideline him were gone, along with the company's CFO and its chief legal officer.

Mullenweg broke the news himself, in a Slack message to employees: "@Mark Davies has conspired with @Ann Dunwoody, @Toni, and @Sue Decker behind my back and they voted to put me on a paid leave of absence. I voted against that."

On his return he wrote: "(Don't call it a comeback…) Howdy everybody!" — alongside a link to LL Cool J's "Mama Said Knock You Out."

None of the board members have publicly explained why they wanted him out. Mullenweg has declined to say why he was all but fired, or how he got back control so fast.

Even investors were guessing. A person familiar with BlackRock's investment in Automattic said they learned of the board's move from news reports. "I don't understand how he basically reinstated himself and reversed the decision of the vote," the person said. "That makes no sense to us."

What's behind the fight?

Interviews by Fortune with former employees, plus court filings, point to an unresolved civil war inside Automattic over Mullenweg's fight with WP Engine, a WordPress hosting company majority-owned by private equity firm Silver Lake. That fight has so far driven out 159 staffers.

The numbers behind the grudge: Mullenweg said Automattic donated about 3,900 hours a week to improving WordPress, while WP Engine — a company of roughly the same size — gave back roughly 40. He called WP Engine a "cancer" on WordPress, demanded a cut of its revenue for using the WordPress trademark (Automattic's first offer, per its court filings: $5 million a year), and cut it off from key resources.

WP Engine sued Automattic and Mullenweg in federal court in Northern California in October 2024, alleging attempted extortion, libel and business interference, and later added antitrust claims. A federal judge revived those claims on Sept. 24. If WP Engine wins, federal antitrust law could let it collect three times its damages. Automattic countersued a year later, alleging trademark infringement; WP Engine has asked the judge to throw out those claims as punishment for what it calls Mullenweg's bad-faith conduct.

How did the fight hit headcount?

In October 2024, Mullenweg offered staff who disagreed with his approach $30,000 or six months' salary — whichever was higher — to leave. He called it an "alignment offer." 159 people took it, about 8.4% of the company, according to Mullenweg's blog.

A former Automattic team lead who took the buyout said he thought fighting WP Engine publicly rather than negotiating privately would hurt the company. "I felt it's not going to develop well for the company in the future," he said, "and it happened to be so."

Not everyone agreed. Naman Malhotra, a former WooCommerce engineering lead who left in 2025, said Mullenweg "did the right thing." "If you're using open source, you need to contribute back," he said. He called the buyout unusually generous: "I've never seen any company do that."

Why did the board act — and why did it fail?

The math made the board's move a suicide mission. Mullenweg has said he owns about 84% of the voting power of Automattic's stock. There was no way for directors to overcome his votes. A former employee said the move may have been more of a message than a real power play.

Court filings suggest a trigger: the WP Engine suit has become a fight over evidence. After more than a year of discovery, Automattic had turned over just 16 of Mullenweg's Telegram messages, one Signal conversation and no WhatsApp messages. Mullenweg lost a phone while traveling, can't locate a laptop, and his phone wasn't fully copied until around March 2026, the filings say.

On the night of the board's vote, Mullenweg posted that WP Engine's lawyers "have a pretty good chance of getting a judge to say I spoiled evidence in a malicious way trying to hide something."

At an Oct. 7 hearing, Magistrate Judge Ajay Krishnan said he was leaning toward denying WP Engine's sanctions request. "At the end of the day, I think it starts off with some problematic behavior from Mr. Mullenweg, but I'm just not seeing the rest of the story that would get me to a finding of spoliation," Krishnan said. But he noted a 2025 letter from Automattic's then-lawyers, claiming "all reasonable steps" had been taken to preserve messages, "suggests a little bit more than what was actually done." Mullenweg's phone wasn't imaged until two weeks after that letter.

"It's not even just a little bit more. It was false," WP Engine lawyer Yury Kapgan replied.

How did the 33 hours unfold?

A special committee of three directors — ex-CEO Toni Schneider, former Yahoo! president Sue Decker, and retired four-star Army general Ann Dunwoody — voted to put Mullenweg on leave and named CFO Mark Davies interim CEO. Davies had told a WP Engine board member in 2024 that Automattic would "go to war" to defend its trademark, according to WP Engine's filings. Now he was usurping the man who started that war.

During those hours, Davies and legal chief Andy Missan signed each other's severance agreements, worth about $8.15 million combined, TechCrunch reported.

By Sept. 12, Mullenweg was back. Schneider and Decker resigned, Dunwoody was removed, and Davies and Missan were fired. Mullenweg named a new board two weeks later: science fiction author Hugh Howey, author Andy Chan, and IRL co-founders Krutal Desai and Henry Khachatryan.

For context on the stakes: WordPress powers more than 40% of the web. Mullenweg created it with Mike Little in 2003, founded Automattic two years later, and bought Tumblr in 2019 for $3 million. In 2021, Automattic raised $288 million at a valuation of about $7.5 billion, bringing total funding close to $1 billion.

In public, Mullenweg has played the episode for laughs. "Founder advice," he wrote on X. "If you don't have a coup attempt every few years, you're not hiring strong enough leaders."

Judge Krishnan said he would issue a sanctions ruling shortly — and with antitrust claims revived and treble damages on the table, the legal war that helped spark the coup is still Automattic's biggest open exposure.