Automattic's 33-Hour Board Coup Cost $8M as Mullenweg Declared Himself a Pirate
Fireship · youtube · 2026-09-24
Fireship recaps the boardroom drama at Automattic: WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg was fired by his board while at Burning Man, and 33 hours later he had replaced the board and declared himself a pirate. The video puts the cost of the whole episode at roughly $8 million.
- Board moved to oust Mullenweg while he was offline at Burning Man
- Within 33 hours he reversed it and reconstituted the board
- Estimated damage: about $8M
- Sponsored by Greptile, an AI code review tool
More from Companies & People
- CAD+AI afterhours lands in NYC on Oct 5 at nTopology HQ — burhop · 2026-09-24
- Jensen Huang: if OpenAI or Anthropic think their models "aren't safe," "we have to shut the labs down" — HanchungLee · 2026-09-24
- 46 AI rollup firms graded: the 2026 market map of AI-native private equity — curious_vii · 2026-09-24
- Inside Anthropic's new molecular biology lab: Claude proposes, scientists verify — AnthropicAI · 2026-09-24
- Claude discovers unknown enzyme system in phage DNA with CRISPR-like repeats — AnthropicAI · 2026-09-24
- OpenAI engineer's one-year reflection: extreme agency and ownership across the stack — himanshustwts · 2026-09-24