Matt Mullenweg claims he retook control of Automattic

Matt Mullenweg told Automattic staff in Slack that he was “back in control” within roughly two days of the board voting to push him onto paid leave, according to TechCrunch. The message, seen in a screenshot and confirmed by two sources, came after Automattic had acknowledged that its chief financial officer, Mark Davies, had been made interim CEO.

The speed of the reversal matters because Automattic is not a small founder-led studio; it sits behind WordPress.com and other web-publishing infrastructure used by millions. Yet the public record, so far, consists of fragments: a board vote with undisclosed reasons, a spokesperson confirming leave status, and then a founder announcing a return before any formal board statement appears. In TechCrunch’s account, Davies’ Slack account was deactivated, and Mullenweg removed Slack admins—moves that turn an internal communications system into a control point.

Mullenweg’s own posts add another layer of institutional ambiguity. On X, he suggested “things are different than they appear” and asked sysadmins and security researchers to help move some of his hosting away from Automattic, even as he also said he supported Davies as CEO. He also pointed to Silver Lake—described by TechCrunch as a private equity firm and majority owner of WP Engine—as part of a plan to “destroy” his life, while WP Engine is in litigation with him and Automattic. None of those claims are accompanied by documents in the reporting, but they signal how quickly a corporate governance dispute can spill into platform operations when the founder is also a technical operator.

For employees and customers, the practical question is not the playlist link Mullenweg posted to LL Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out,” but what authority looks like in a company where the board can remove a CEO and the CEO can apparently reassert control through internal systems. If the board’s decision was a “misunderstanding,” as Mullenweg suggested, the episode still shows how little outside visibility there is into who can access accounts, change admin rights, and move services when leadership is contested. If it was not a misunderstanding, the same episode shows how hard it can be to enforce a board decision when the founder controls the levers that keep the organisation running day to day.

Automattic has not responded to TechCrunch’s request for comment on Mullenweg’s claim of returning to power. As of the report, the most concrete confirmation of the company’s leadership remains a Slack message and an interim CEO’s deactivated account.