The board of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, has placed founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg on paid leave and named CFO Mark Davies interim CEO, sidelining the WordPress co-founder as leader of the company he founded more than 20 years ago.

Automattic acknowledged the leadership change Wednesday after 404 Media first reported it, based on internal Slack messages. In a subsequent statement, the company said Mullenweg is “currently on leave,” and Davies will lead Automattic as interim CEO. The board said it has full confidence in Davies and the company’s ability to carry out its priorities.

Mullenweg said he opposed the leave, accusing Davies and board members Ann Dunwoody, Toni Schneider and Sue Decker of acting behind his back. “I voted against that,” Mullenweg wrote in a Slack message. He also said he received the resolution 50 minutes before the meeting and was denied additional time to have independent legal counsel review it.

Mullenweg will continue serving on Automattic’s board, according to a Slack message from Davies reported by 404 Media. Automattic’s website currently lists four directors: Mullenweg, Dunwoody, Decker and Schneider, who previously served as Automattic CEO from 2006 to 2014.

The company has not publicly said why the board placed Mullenweg on leave or how long the arrangement is expected to last.

Automattic is the private company that operates the commercial WordPress.com hosting service. Its portfolio also includes Tumblr, Jetpack, Newspack and many other products and services. The company is separate from WordPress, the open source project co-founded and led by Mullenweg and supported by contributors around the world. WordPress.org is the project’s infrastructure hub, hosting software downloads, documentation, plugin and theme repositories, and resources for contributors.

The leave from his Automattic CEO role does not remove Mullenweg from leadership of the WordPress project, according to WordPress Executive Director Mary Hubbard. She told the WordPress.org community that Mullenweg remains the project’s leader and that its teams, priorities and work will continue as planned.

The board action comes while Automattic and Mullenweg are locked in a lengthy legal fight with WP Engine, a rival WordPress host. The dispute dates back to September 2024, when Mullenweg publicly criticized WP Engine’s contributions to WordPress and restricted its access to WordPress.org infrastructure. WP Engine sued Automattic and Mullenweg the following month, accusing them of interfering with its business and pressuring the company to pay for a WordPress trademark license, among other claims.

The litigation intensified this summer. On July 28, WP Engine asked a federal court to sanction Automattic and Mullenweg, alleging they failed to preserve communications relevant to the litigation. WP Engine asked for sanctions including dismissal of seven trademark counterclaims. Automattic disputed the allegations in an Aug. 12 response, saying it preserved and collected more than six terabytes of material, reviewed more than 1.5 million documents and forensically imaged five of Mullenweg’s devices. It also argued that WP Engine had not identified any missing message relevant to the case. The sanctions motion remains pending and is scheduled for an Oct. 1 hearing.

The board vote is also notable because Mullenweg has historically held proxy voting rights over investor shares at the privately held company. In 2021, he wrote that every Automattic funding round since 2011 had included proxies giving him the right to vote investors’ shares. The company has not disclosed whether those proxy arrangements remain in place.