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Automattic
American web development company From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Automattic Inc. is an American global distributed company most notable for WordPress.com and its contributions to the WordPress system. The company was founded in 2005.[2]
Automattic's brands and products include WordPress.com, Akismet, Gravatar, BuddyPress,[3] Simplenote, WooCommerce,[4] Atavist,[5] Tumblr,[6] Parse.ly,[7] Day One,[8] Pocket Casts,[9] and Beeper.[10]
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Matt Mullenweg co-founded the open-source blogging platform WordPress in 2003. Two years later, he founded Automattic to monetize the platform.[11]
Initially the company developed commercial products related to WordPress, including WordPress.com for WordPress-managed hosting and the spam filtering service Akismet.[12] Toni Schneider, a former executive at Yahoo, became chief executive officer (CEO) in 2006.[12][13] Automattic acquired Gravatar in 2007, then IntenseDebate and PollDaddy in 2008.[14][15]
Automattic transferred the WordPress source code and trademarks to the WordPress Foundation in 2010 and it also acquired the prompt generator Plinky.[16][17] In 2011, the company created Jetpack, a WordPress extension.[15]
Automattic acquired Lean Domain Search and CloudUp in 2013.[18][19] In 2014, Automattic raised $160 million in a venture round, acquired Longreads, and Mullenweg became CEO.[20][12] Schneider remained as an adviser while Mullenweg led product development.[13] Automattic acquired WooCommerce and relaunched the hosted version of its content manager, WordPress.com, in 2015.[12][21] This version replaced PHP with JavaScript and simplified administrative design. Automattic also launched a WordPress application with Mac support.[21]
Automattic's remote working culture was the topic of a participative journalism project by Scott Berkun, resulting in the 2013 book The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work.[22]
On November 21, 2016, Automattic managed the launch and development of the .blog gTLD.[23]
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In 2017, Automattic announced that it would close its San Francisco office, which had served as an optional co-working space for its employees, alongside similar spaces near Portland, Maine and in Cape Town, South Africa.[24]
Automattic acquired Atavist Magazine in 2018.[25] The following year, it raised $300 million in a Series D funding round led by Salesforce Ventures in 2019, giving it a $3 billion valuation. The 2019 round of funding brought the total amount raised by Automattic to more than $600 million since its founding.[26] Verizon sold Tumblr to Automattic in August 2019 for approximately $3 million.[27][28] As part of the acquisition, Automattic retained approximately 200 Tumblr staffers.[28] The same year, Google and Automattic partnered to create Newspack, a publishing platform for local news organizations. Google, the Lenfest Institute for Journalism, the Knight Foundation, and Civil Media invested $2.2 million in the project.[29][30]
The COVID-19 pandemic boosted Automattic's growth as more businesses moved online.[31] In August 2020, Automattic released P2, a collaboration platform with a blog-like interface, designed for asynchronous distributed teams.[32] That year, Automattic had approximately 1,200 employees.[33] By 2021, Automattic's valuation reached $7.5 billion. At the time, Wordpress hosted 28 million websites, or 40 percent of all websites on the Internet.[34][35] Automattic acquired the journaling app Day One and Frontity, a React framework for WordPress website development, and podcast streaming service Pocket Casts in July 2021.[36][37][38] The following year, it acquired Parse.ly in its largest deal to date.[39] The company launched the Jetpack AI Assistant for WordPress in 2023.[40]
Automattic acquired multiservice messaging apps Texts in 2023.[41] The company purchased messaging app Beeper, grammar checking tool Harper, and WordPress artificial intelligence plugin maker WPAI in 2024.[42][43][44] Automattic was included in the 2024 Forbes Cloud 100 list.[45] In February 2024, it was reported that the company would begin selling user data from Tumblr and WordPress.com to Midjourney and OpenAI.[46]
On April 2, 2025, the company announced a restructuring that resulted in the layoff of 16% of its workforce, or 281 positions.[47]
WP Engine dispute and lawsuit
Towards the end of September 2024, Automattic was involved in a controversy with WP Engine, in which Automattic claimed WP Engine used the WordPress trademark in a way that confused consumers. One of the main claims made is that WP Engine does not pay trademark royalties to the WordPress Foundation.[48] Over 8 percent of Automattic's staff resigned after CEO Matt Mullenweg offered $30,000 or six months' salary as severance to those who disagreed with his stance.[49] The next month, Mullenweg made another offer, this time of nine months' salary.[50]
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Corporate affairs
As of December 2024[update], Automattic's board consisted of the following directors:[51]
- Matt Mullenweg (founder and CEO of Automattic)
- Phil Black (co-founder of True Ventures venture capital firm)
- Toni Schneider (former CEO of Automattic, 2006–2014)
- Ann E. Dunwoody (retired U.S. army general)
- Susan Decker (former President of Yahoo! Inc.)
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