The Mullenweg Automattic board ouster lasted, in the end, just 33 hours and 20 minutes. By Saturday evening, Automattic had issued a statement confirming that Matt Mullenweg was back as chairman and CEO, with what it called the full support of the board.
‘Matt Mullenweg is the chairman and CEO of Automattic, with full support of the board and if you search online you can see many top executives and Automatticians supporting him as well,’ a company spokesperson told TechCrunch via email.
The speed of the reversal made the episode look less like a managed leadership transition and more like a governance implosion.
Inside the Mullenweg Automattic Board Ouster
The board had voted earlier in the week to place Mullenweg on paid leave for reasons it did not disclose. According to 404 Media, Mullenweg told staff via Slack that he had received only 50 minutes’ notice before the vote, and that his request to have the resolution reviewed by outside legal counsel was denied.
The board members he accused of conspiring against him, named in his Slack message as Mark Davies, Ann Dunwoody, Toni Schneider, and Sue Decker, were those who had cast the votes, per Inc. Davies, who has served as Automattic’s CFO since 2019, was named interim CEO with what the board called full confidence. He held no Automattic stock at the time.
Mullenweg did not go quietly. He removed other administrators from the company’s Slack workspace, told employees the situation had been resolved, and posted a series of messages that veered between defiant and surreal. ‘I’m a pirate now,’ he wrote at one point, along with language that, by his own prior reputation, was out of character. ‘If this is an HR problem, please wrangle me in since my normal wranglers are with Mark Davies,’ he added.
When asked by reporters whether his claims of being back in control were real or performative, he promised a blog post. What arrived was a post about buying a houseboat. Asked if the whole episode had been trolling, he replied: ‘I’m not a troll I’m a pirate, obviously.’
On X, Mullenweg noted this was likely the fifth time he had faced what he called a ‘coup.’
Severance Deals and a Board That No Longer Exists
Behind the scenes, the governance chaos produced its own paperwork. During the 33-hour window of Mullenweg’s removal, interim CEO Davies and Chief Legal Officer Andy Missan each signed the other’s severance agreement, both made effective on the same date, according to TechCrunch. Davies’s agreement included a clause specifying that losing the interim CEO title would not constitute ‘Good Reason’ for severance purposes, the legal term that typically allows an executive to resign and still collect a payout, so long as he retained his CFO position.
In a message to staff after his return, Mullenweg left little ambiguity about where he saw the power sitting. ‘For purposes of Delaware law, I am the CEO, President, Treasurer, and Secretary,’ he wrote, according to TechCrunch’s subsequent reporting.
The board that had engineered the ouster did not survive it. Toni Schneider resigned, along with the other directors who had participated in the vote. Schneider, who served as Automattic’s CEO from 2006 to 2014 before the founding of the company’s current board structure, is a partner at True Ventures, where he has been since 2005. In March 2026, he stepped in as interim CEO of Bluesky, replacing Jay Graber, who moved to a chief innovation officer role, per CNBC. He did not respond to requests for comment sent via his personal email or through Bluesky.
Automattic said it was aware of questions about the board’s composition, which, as of the time of the reinstatement announcement, remained in flux.
What the episode leaves unresolved is the underlying dispute. The board’s rationale for the vote was never stated publicly, and Mullenweg offered no formal explanation of how the situation was ultimately settled. With the directors who initiated the action now gone, the question of what prompted the Mullenweg Automattic board ouster in the first place may go unanswered. The company’s next public test will be whether a reconstituted board can hold together any differently from the one it replaced.
