Mullenweg fills Automattic's board with his own picks weeks after a 33-hour ouster

Mullenweg said at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2024 that he controlled 84% of Automattic's voting power ^[6]. Every other holder combined has 16% ^[1]. That split decides how a fight between the board and the founder ends. Directors can vote to sideline him ^[1]. According to Runtimewire's account of TechCrunch's reporting, his voting control let him reverse the leave vote and lets him decide who sits on the board afterward ^[7].

September followed that path. The three directors behind the vote were gone within five days of it ^[3][3]. The finance and legal chiefs left too ^[4]. In an internal message, Mullenweg said that "for purposes of Delaware law, I am the CEO, President, Treasurer, and Secretary," according to TechCrunch ^[8]. By his own account he holds four officer titles, one of them the CEO title the board had given his CFO on an interim basis ^[4]. He called the recent board meeting the company's most interesting in a decade, a ranking the record supports, and told staff the attempted removal had brought him "many amazing supporters" ^[15].

Runtimewire describes the four replacements as having very different company-building records ^[11]. Howey built a career on "Wool," an independently published novel that became the "Silo" series. Chan wrote "Breakup Bootcamp" ^[11]. Khachatryan and Desai co-founded IRL, a social app that shut down in 2023 after a company investigation found about 95% of its claimed user base was automated or bots ^[12]. The founders later sued investors, contesting their role in the shutdown and the bot findings ^[12]. Runtimewire notes that this history does not establish why Mullenweg chose them ^[13]. Mullenweg said Khachatryan was "a founder and builder," TechCrunch reported ^[10].

For operators, Automattic is the company behind WordPress.com, Tumblr and WooCommerce ^[16]. I think its new board is best treated as an advisory body, because the executive its members oversee is the one who seated them ^[9][7]. Runtimewire frames the open question this way: the reset does not settle how much practical oversight a board can exercise when the founder controls the vote and can replace directors who move against him ^[18]. The reporting does not describe any change to the products themselves.

The live legal risk is the WP Engine case, a dispute over trademarks and open-source contributions ^[14]. In July, WP Engine accused Mullenweg in court filings of destroying evidence. That is an allegation in the litigation, not an established finding ^[14]. Mullenweg has also replaced Automattic's litigation counsel, according to TechCrunch ^[5].

Sites running the open-source software sit one step further out. The new board changes who advises and oversees Mullenweg inside Automattic. It leaves unsettled the separate dispute over how his company and the open-source WordPress project should relate, Runtimewire reports ^[17].