Mullenweg back in the Automattic CEO chair two days after being ousted

Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg claims he has once again become the company's chief executive — just two days after the board of directors removed him from the post. That's according to TechCrunch, citing a message Mullenweg left in the company's internal Slack.

According to 404 Media, earlier in the week Mullenweg told employees that CFO Mark Davies had “colluded” with the board, which voted to place the founder on paid leave. Mullenweg himself, by his account, voted against it. The board also appointed Davies interim acting CEO, while leaving the founder his seat on the board. An Automattic spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that Mullenweg is “on leave” and that Davies had been named interim leader.

“I control Automattic”

Yet in a new message seen by TechCrunch, Mullenweg declared that the board had “come back into alignment” and that he “controls Automattic.” “A lot has happened over the past 48 hours that we still have to sort out, and I hope most of it was a misunderstanding, because I have enormous respect for those involved,” he wrote.

According to TechCrunch, Davies's Slack account was deactivated, and Mullenweg himself removed all the other administrators of the corporate Slack. Judging by his posts, word of the founder's return came out late on Thursday evening.

The founder's tone

Mullenweg hasn't lost his taste for dramatic pronouncements. On Friday he posted on X: “If you're not having a coup attempt at least once every few years, you're not hiring strong enough executives.” In a separate post he added that, by his count, this was already the fifth such attempt. That same day he published a blog entry headlined “A Major Life Announcement” — about his plan to buy a houseboat.

Automattic owns a number of prominent projects, among them Wordpress.com, Tumblr and the messaging app Beeper. The company did not immediately respond to The Verge's request for comment. It's worth recalling that Mullenweg has already found himself at the center of high-profile conflicts in recent years — notably around WordPress.

Source: The Verge