Automattic board puts Matt Mullenweg on paid leave

Automattic's board has put founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg on paid leave and named CFO Mark Davies interim CEO. Spokesperson Megan Fox confirmed the leave in an emailed statement to The Verge and TechCrunch, saying Mullenweg is currently on leave and that Davies will lead as interim CEO. The board, Fox added, has full confidence in Mark's leadership and in the team's ability to execute against the company's priorities.

This is a company email confirming a board-ordered paid leave and an interim CEO appointment. It is not a securities filing, and it is not a WordPress.org leadership change. 404 Media reported the leave first. Automattic has not published a public reason or an end date, so treat "ousted" headlines as overstating what the company has confirmed.

Mullenweg remains on Automattic's board, Davies told employees. In an all-hands Slack, Mullenweg wrote that Davies, Ann Dunwoody, Toni Schneider, and Sue Decker voted to put him on paid leave, and that he voted against it. He said the resolution arrived about 50 minutes before the meeting and that repeated requests for even a few hours of independent counsel review were denied.

WordPress.org executive director Mary Hubbard told the community Slack that the commercial leave does not move the open-source project. "Matt remains the leader of the WordPress project and I remain Executive Director of WordPress. Our teams, priorities, and work continue as planned."

The backdrop is Automattic's still-running legal fight with WP Engine. That case is context, not a cause the company has stated.

Other board and CEO moves this week sit next to Adobe naming Anil Chakravarthy and Apple's first Ternus-era keynote. Governance reviews this year have also reached Andreessen Horowitz board seats and Meta's state youth-safety settlement.

If you run WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, or Jetpack in production, decide today whether vendor-risk and WP Engine-related legal headlines change your hosting or plugin roadmap this quarter, and assign an owner to watch Automattic interim CEO guidance for billing, trademark, and plugin directory policy.