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Matthew Charles Mullenweg (born January 11, 1984) is an American web developer and entrepreneur. He is known as a co-founder of the free and open-source web publishing software WordPress and the founder of Automattic.
Matt Mullenweg | |
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 Mullenweg in 2019 | |
| Born | Matthew Charles Mullenweg January 11, 1984 Houston, Texas, U.S. |
| Education | University of Houston |
| Occupations |
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| Organization | Automattic |
| Known for | Co-founding WordPress |
| Title |
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| Website | ma |
Mullenweg was born in Houston, Texas, and grew up in the Willowbend neighborhood.[4] His father, Chuck, was a computer programmer. Mullenweg was raised Catholic.[5] He attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts to play the saxophone,[6] although he was frequently absent due to chronic migraines. After graduating from high school, he studied economics, philosophy and political science at the University of Houston, eventually dropping out after his sophomore year in 2004.[7][8][9]
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Mullenweg became enamored with blogging and started contributing updates to b2—a popular open-source blogging software—in 2002. However, Michel Valdrighi—the sole maintainer—soon ceased activity, and Mullenweg discussed prospects of creating a fork with other contributors;[6] thus, in January 2003, Mullenweg created WordPress with Mike Little under the GPL v2-or-later open-source license[10] at the age of 19, and Valdrighi endorsed the project a few months later.[11][9]
In March 2003, he co-founded the Global Multimedia Protocols Group (GMPG) with Eric A. Meyer and Tantek Çelik. In April 2004, he helped launch Ping-O-Matic, a mechanism for notifying search engines about blog updates.[12]
In October 2004, he was hired by CNET who would allow him to develop WordPress part-time as part of his job. He dropped out of college and moved to San Francisco for the position.[13]
Automattic
Mullenweg left CNET in October 2005 to focus on WordPress full-time.[14] Soon after he announced Akismet, an initiative to reduce comment and trackback spam.[15] In December, he founded Automattic, with Akismet and managed web hosting service WordPress.com as its flagship products. In January 2006, Mullenweg recruited former Yahoo! executive Toni Schneider to join Automattic as CEO.[16]
Since 2006, he has delivered an annual "State of the Word" speech on the progress and future of the WordPress software, named after the State of the Union address.[17][18]
In 2011, Mullenweg purchased the WordPress news website WP Tavern.[19][20]
In January 2014, Mullenweg became CEO of Automattic. Schneider moved to work on new projects at Automattic.[1] Mullenweg received the Heinz Award for Technology, the Economy and Employment in 2016, for "helping to democratize online publishing".[21]
Mullenweg began a three-month sabbatical from his role as CEO at the beginning of February 2024.[22] Later that month, Mullenweg engaged in a public feud with a transgender Tumblr user who, frustrated with the site's failure to address transphobic harassment, posted that she wished Mullenweg would die in a comedic way. The user was subsequently banned. Responding to user uproar, Mullenweg addressed the ban in posts on his personal Tumblr blog, in which he characterized the post as a death threat, and shared private account information about the user. Mullenweg also responded to individual commenters on Tumblr in posts and direct messages, and went to Twitter to respond to the banned user's tweets about the situation.[23][24] A few days later, transgender employees of Tumblr and Automattic made a post on the official Tumblr staff blog characterizing his response as "unwarranted and harmful" and stating that he did not speak on their behalf. They also said that the user's post was not a realistic threat of violence and not the reason for her ban.[25]
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On several occasions, Mullenweg has publicly challenged competitors to WordPress and WordPress.com. He has stated that he prefers to settle disputes in the court of public opinion and described his approach as "brinksmanship", noting that the potential cost of legal action could put Automattic in a "tough spot".[6]
In 2008, shortly before WordPress 2.5's release, Six Apart's Movable Type published "A WordPress 2.5 Upgrade Guide"—a comparison of their CMS with their rival, WordPress—as a company blog article that Mullenweg characterized as "desperate and dirty".[26][27][28] In 2013, developers on the digital marketplace Envato were banned from speaking at WordPress events after he criticized the platform for selling WordPress themes with the graphics and CSS components under a proprietary license instead of the GPL.[29]
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In 2016, Mullenweg accused Wix.com, a competitor to WordPress.com, of reusing WordPress's mobile text editor code in Wix's own mobile app without adhering to the terms of the GPL. Despite the license's requirement to publish anything built with GPL code under the GPL, Wix's CEO claimed that the company open-sourced their forked version of the component and satisfied the license's terms[30][31] before the app switched to its own fork of the MIT-licensed text editor that the WordPress editor was based upon. The new fork added a clause to the MIT license that forbids redistribution under any other license.[32]
In 2022, Mullenweg criticized GoDaddy for not reinvesting in the WordPress project sufficiently.[33]
WP Engine dispute
During the week preceding September 22, 2024, Matt Mullenweg—founder of WordPress.com—began speaking negatively about rival WP Engine. Mullenweg gave a speech at WordCamp US 2024 that argued that WP Engine had made meager contributions to WordPress compared to Automattic, criticized WP Engine's significant ties to private equity, and called for a boycott, sparking internet controversy.[34] In response, WP Engine issued a cease and desist against what it characterized as defamation and extortion, attributing his attacks to WP Engine's refusal to pay Automattic "a significant percentage of its gross revenues – tens of millions of dollars in fact – on an ongoing basis" for what it claimed were necessary trademark licensing fees (later clarified as 8% of all revenue, payable in gross or in salaries for its own employees working under WordPress.org's direction, combined with a clause that would've prohibited forking[35]) for the "WordPress" name.[36] Automattic responded by sending its own cease and desist the next day, citing the trademark issue.[37] On October 2, 2024, WP Engine sued Automattic and Mullenweg for extortion and abuse of power, which the defendants denied.[35]
As a result of the dispute, WordPress.org blocked WP Engine and affiliates from accessing its servers—which include security updates, the plugin and theme repository, and more—on September 25, 2024, a day after its trademark policy was updated[38] to ask against usage of WP "in a way that confuses people", listing WP Engine as an example.[39] Following backlash, access to WordPress.org was temporarily restored until October 1 to allow WP Engine to build its own mirror sites two days later,[40][41] which the company did.[39] On the 12th, WordPress.org replaced the listing of WP Engine's Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin on the WordPress.org plugin directory with a fork called "Secure Custom Fields" citing a guideline that empowers the foundation to "make changes to a plugin, without developer consent, in the interest of public safety".[42]
On October 7, 2024, to align the company's stance, Mullenweg announced that 159 employees—8.4% of Automattic—had quit in exchange for a severance package of $30,000 or six months of salary, whichever is higher, with the condition that the resigned would not be able to return.[43] The next week concluded another offer of nine months' salary to attempt to placate those who could not quit for financial reasons,[44] though with only four hours to respond and the added term of being excluded from the WordPress.org community.[39]
On December 10, 2024, a preliminary injunction was issued by judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín of the District Court for the Northern District of California stating that Automattic and Matt Mullenweg must cease to block, disable, and interfere with WP Engine and their associates's access to WordPress.org.[45]Remove ads
Mullenweg is a principal at angel investment firm Audrey Capital, which he co-founded in 2008 alongside Naveen Selvadurai and Audrey Kim.[46]
As of 2024[update], the company lists investments in companies such as CoinDesk, MakerBot, Sonos, SpaceX, Ring, as well as software companies including Calm, Chartbeat, DailyBurn, Memrise, Genius, Nord Security and Telegram. It has also funded startups that provide services to web developers including Creative Market, GitLab, NPM, SendGrid, Stripe and Typekit.[46] From 2017 to 2019, Mullenweg also served as a board member for GitLab.[47]
Mullenweg has employed a team of contributors to WordPress through Audrey Capital since 2010, who work separately from Automattic.[48][49]
On the 20th anniversary of WordPress' initial release, Mullenweg announced a scholarship program aimed at the children of significant contributors to open-source projects. To remain in the program, participants must commit annually to a set of principles.[50]
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