On September 9, Automattic’s board voted to remove Matt Mullenweg as CEO of the company behind WordPress.com. Thirty-three hours and twenty minutes later, he was back. The board members who ousted him are now gone. His position is more secure than it was before the crisis started.
If you run a WordPress site, you have probably seen the headlines and wondered whether any of this affects you. The short answer is: not right now. The longer answer requires understanding something that most of the coverage has glossed over: the difference between Automattic and WordPress.org, and why that distinction is the only thing that actually matters to your site
What Actually Happened
The timeline is worth laying out clearly, because the speed of events is part of the story.
On Wednesday, September 9, Automattic’s board members Ann Dunwoody, Toni Schneider, and Sue Decker voted to put Mullenweg on paid leave. CFO Mark Davies was named interim CEO. Mullenweg says he received the board resolution 50 minutes before the meeting began and that his repeated requests for time to consult independent legal counsel were denied. He voted against the resolution. Then he announced the whole thing himself in a company-wide Slack message, calling it a conspiracy.
Automattic confirmed the change to press that same day. Mary Hubbard, Executive Director of WordPress.org, posted on X that the WordPress project itself was not affected and that her team was continuing as normal.
What followed over the next 48 hours was less a corporate governance process and more a demonstration of what happens when a founder controls more infrastructure than the board does. Mullenweg removed all Slack administrators from the company’s internal communications. He posted about being a “pirate.” He accused Silver Lake, the private equity firm that is the majority owner of WP Engine, of being involved in the plan against him. He posted on X that “things are different than they appear.”
On Friday morning, September 11, Mullenweg posted in the company-wide Slack that the board was back in agreement and he was back in control. He linked to LL Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out.” Mark Davies’ Slack account was deactivated. When Mullenweg told a journalist that a blog post confirming his return was coming, the blog post turned out to be about buying a houseboat.
On Saturday, September 12, Automattic issued an official statement: “Matt Mullenweg is the chairman and CEO of Automattic, with full support of the board. Matt was away for only 33 hours and 20 minutes. We are now back to work.”
By Sunday, September 14, the picture was clearer. The entire board was out. Toni Schneider departed and quietly removed his Automattic references from his personal website. Sue Decker resigned, her LinkedIn updated to show board service ending September 2026. Ann Dunwoody was removed by Mullenweg. CFO Mark Davies was let go. Chief Legal Officer Andy Missan was also gone, his LinkedIn updated to show he left in September 2026. Automattic confirmed departures had occurred but declined to name individuals.
The timeline above draws on reporting by TechCrunch, which broke the original story and confirmed the board departures.
The reason the board voted to oust Mullenweg has never been publicly confirmed. An internal announcement about new board composition was expected on September 15. Why the vote happened, and who pushed for it, remains officially unknown.
The Two WordPress Structures You Need to Understand
Most of the coverage of this story treats Automattic and WordPress as the same thing. They are not, and the difference is what determines whether any of this week’s events affect your site.
Automattic is a private company. It owns WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, Pocket Casts, Jetpack, and Akismet. It employs most of the people who contribute to WordPress development. It is in an active lawsuit with WP Engine. It had the board crisis. Mullenweg is its CEO.
WordPress.org is a separate structure. It hosts the open-source WordPress software, the plugin and theme directory that every self-hosted WordPress installation uses for updates, and the documentation and community infrastructure that the ecosystem runs on. The WordPress trademark sits in the WordPress Foundation, which Mullenweg controls personally. WordPress.org is not part of Automattic. The board that voted to remove Mullenweg from Automattic had no authority over WordPress.org. It did not, could not, and did not attempt to change who runs it.
Throughout the 33 hours Mullenweg was technically on leave from Automattic, he remained in full control of WordPress.org. The plugin directory kept working. Core updates kept shipping. Nothing in the open-source infrastructure changed, because nothing in the governance of Automattic touches that infrastructure.
That is the most important thing to understand if you run a WordPress site. The WordPress.com hosting service is an Automattic product. The WordPress software your site runs on, and the plugin repository it pulls from, are a different structure entirely.
What the WP Engine Lawsuit Has to Do With This
To understand why the board might have acted, you need some background on the legal situation Automattic is currently navigating.
In September 2024, Mullenweg publicly called WP Engine a “cancer to WordPress” at a major industry conference, accusing it of profiting from the WordPress project without contributing enough back. He then used his control over WordPress.org to block WP Engine’s access to the plugin and theme infrastructure, affecting more than 200,000 websites. A federal court issued an injunction ordering him to restore that access.
WP Engine sued Automattic in October 2024, alleging defamation and abuse of power. Automattic filed counterclaims in October 2025. The case has been grinding through discovery ever since, producing a long series of filings about missing messages, a motion for sanctions, and the kind of legal complexity that tends to unsettle corporate boards.
The most immediate pressure point: on July 28, 2026, WP Engine filed a motion asking the court to sanction Automattic and Mullenweg over allegedly missing WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram messages. A hearing on that motion is scheduled for September 30, 2026, two weeks from today. Automattic has denied any wrongdoing and says WP Engine cannot identify a single specific missing message. Whatever the outcome, it is the next significant event in a case that is not close to resolution. A jury trial is currently scheduled for October 2027.
Most observers believe the pending sanctions hearing and the legal exposure around it was the most plausible trigger for the board’s September 9 vote. That has not been confirmed by anyone involved. The board’s reason for acting has never been publicly stated.
What Has Actually Changed for WordPress Users
Here is the practical picture as of today.
Nothing that affects your site has changed. WordPress.org plugin and theme updates continue as normal. WordPress core software development continues as normal. WordPress.com hosting plans, pricing, and support are unchanged. WooCommerce is unchanged. Jetpack is unchanged.
What has changed inside Automattic: the board is entirely new, with members not yet publicly announced. The CFO is gone. The Chief Legal Officer is gone. The company is entering a critical legal period: the September 30 sanctions hearing. It is doing so with a new internal structure and leadership operating under a founder who has just demonstrated he can and will remove executives who challenge him.
The more significant change is structural and harder to quantify. Before this week, Automattic had a board that was willing to challenge Mullenweg. After this week, it does not. Mullenweg now controls Automattic with less institutional constraint than before, at the same time as he personally controls WordPress.org, the WordPress Foundation, and the trademark. The consolidation of ownership in the hosting industry is a well-documented trend, but the concentration of control in the WordPress ecosystem runs through a single individual rather than a holding company, and this week made that concentration more complete, not less.
That is not necessarily a crisis for WordPress users today. WordPress is not going anywhere. The software is open source and can be forked. The plugin ecosystem is large enough to have significant independent momentum. But anyone who relies on WordPress infrastructure should understand that its governance is unusually centralised for a project at its scale, and that the events of this week did not reduce that centralisation. The parallel to what happens when a hosting provider is acquired or changes leadership is worth thinking about, even if the situations are not identical.
The September 30 Hearing Is the Next Thing to Watch
The board crisis is over. The lawsuit is not.
The sanctions hearing scheduled for September 30 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California is the next event that could materially affect Automattic’s position. If the court finds that evidence was improperly handled, it could issue adverse inference instructions, effectively requiring a jury to assume the missing messages contained evidence that supported WP Engine’s claims. That would significantly weaken Automattic’s counterclaims. If the motion fails, as Automattic expects it will, the case moves toward its eventual trial.
TSH will cover significant developments as they happen. For now, the practical advice for WordPress users is: watch the September 30 hearing, keep your site’s plugins and core updated through WordPress.org as normal, and understand which parts of your WordPress infrastructure depend on Automattic products versus the open-source project.
Common Questions About the Automattic Board Crisis
Does the Automattic board crisis affect my WordPress site?
Not directly, no. The WordPress software your site runs on is distributed through WordPress.org, which is separate from Automattic and was not affected by the leadership change. Plugin and theme updates, core software releases, and WordPress.org infrastructure all continued normally throughout the crisis. If you host with WordPress.com specifically, your hosting is an Automattic product, but no changes to WordPress.com plans or services have been announced.
What is the difference between Automattic and WordPress.org?
Automattic is the private company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, and other commercial products. WordPress.org is the separate open-source project that distributes the WordPress software, hosts the plugin and theme directory, and manages WordPress core development. Mullenweg controls both, but they are structurally separate. The board had authority over Automattic. It had no authority over WordPress.org.
Who is Matt Mullenweg and why does he matter for WordPress?
Mullenweg co-created the original WordPress software in 2003 and founded Automattic in 2004. He is CEO of Automattic and personally controls WordPress.org and the WordPress Foundation, which holds the WordPress trademark. Because the two structures, the commercial company and the open-source project, both run through him without independent governance, his position in the ecosystem is unusually concentrated for a project powering around 40% of the web.
What is the WP Engine lawsuit about?
WP Engine, a major managed WordPress hosting provider, sued Automattic in October 2024 after Mullenweg publicly attacked the company and used his control over WordPress.org to block WP Engine’s access to the plugin and theme directory. WP Engine alleges defamation and abuse of power. Automattic filed counterclaims alleging trademark misuse. A jury trial is scheduled for October 2027. A sanctions hearing over allegedly missing messages is scheduled for September 30, 2026.
Is WordPress.com affected by this?
WordPress.com is an Automattic product, so changes at Automattic could in principle affect it. No changes to WordPress.com plans, pricing, or features have been announced. The leadership disruption was brief and Mullenweg has returned as CEO with what the company describes as full board support. The more relevant question for WordPress.com customers is what the ongoing WP Engine lawsuit and the September 30 hearing produce. That is where the company’s most significant legal exposure currently sits.
