Automattic

Automattic Inc. is the company Matt Mullenweg founded in August 2005, two years after he co-founded the WordPress open-source publishing project. Its business is the commercial layer around that project: WordPress.com sells hosted WordPress plans to individuals and small businesses, WordPress VIP sells managed WordPress to enterprises and publishers, and Jetpack sells security, backup and performance services to sites hosted elsewhere. Automattic is a major contributor to the WordPress open-source software but is a separate entity from it.

Around that core the company has assembled a portfolio largely built by acquisition. Gravatar arrived in 2007, WooCommerce - the commerce layer used by a large share of WordPress storefronts - in 2015, and Tumblr was bought from Verizon in August 2019 for roughly $3 million. Day One and Pocket Casts followed in 2021, and the messaging app Beeper, Texts, Harper and the relationship manager now sold as Mesh have been added since.

The company is fully distributed, with no central office. Automattic reports 1,447 employees working from 81 countries and speaking 107 languages, a model it has run since well before remote work became common. That structure is a recurring theme in how the company describes itself and in how it has been financed.

Automattic has raised money infrequently and in large increments: $29.5 million in 2008, $160 million in 2014 at a $1.16 billion valuation, $300 million from Salesforce Ventures in 2019 at a $3 billion valuation, and a $288 million primary round in February 2021 that brought in BlackRock, Wellington, Schonfeld and Alta Park. In August 2021 the company ran a $250 million share buyback at a $7.5 billion valuation, aimed mainly at current and former employees - its usual mechanism for staff liquidity in the absence of a listing.

The last two years have been contentious. Automattic's September 2024 dispute with the hosting company WP Engine over WordPress trademark use led to litigation that is still running, and to more than 8 percent of staff leaving on a severance offer. In April 2025 the company cut 16 percent of its workforce, 281 roles. In December 2024 BlackRock marked its stake down by about 10 percent. Anyone considering the shares is buying into a profitable-at-the-core hosting and commerce business wrapped in an unresolved legal fight and a consumer portfolio - Tumblr above all - that the CEO has publicly called his biggest failure so far.