The board of Automattic has placed founder and chief executive Matt Mullenweg on a leave of absence against his will. The decision was described in an internal Slack message reviewed by TechCrunch. Automattic is the commercial company behind WordPress.com.
Mullenweg co-created the WordPress open-source software and has led Automattic since its founding. The company also operates WordPress.com hosting, WooCommerce, and other publishing and commerce products. An involuntary leave for a founder-chief executive is unusual at a closely held technology firm.
Earlier Wednesday, Mullenweg wrote in a Slack channel visible to all employees about the company’s chief financial officer, according to TechCrunch. The initial report did not publish the full text of that message or a detailed board rationale. TechCrunch reported that the leave was imposed over Mullenweg’s objections.
An involuntary leave for a founder-chief executive is unusual at a closely held technology firm.
Boards typically use involuntary leaves when they believe a leadership change is required but have not completed a permanent succession. Neither the duration of the leave nor the identity of any interim leader was specified in the available account. Automattic had not, in the reporting cited, issued a matching public statement.
WordPress remains a widely used publishing platform, so Automattic’s governance matters to a large ecosystem of sites and developers. Employees and customers will look next for clarity on who holds executive authority during the leave. This newsroom has not independently reviewed the Slack message described by TechCrunch.
