Automattic Inc. is an American global
distributed company which was founded in August 2005 and is most notable for
WordPress.com (a
freemium blogging service), as well as its contributions to
WordPress (an
open source blogging software). The company's name is a play on founder
Matt Mullenweg's first name and the word "automatic".[2]
History
On January 11, 2006, it was announced that Toni Schneider would be leaving Yahoo! to become
CEO of Automattic. He was previously CEO of
Oddpost before it was acquired by
Yahoo!, where he had continued as a senior executive.[3][4]
In April 2006, Automattic's
Regulation D filing showed it had raised approximately $1.1 million in funding,[5] which Mullenweg addressed in his blog. Investors were
Polaris Ventures, True Ventures, and Radar Partners.[2]
On September 9, 2010, Automattic gave the WordPress trademark and control over bbPress and BuddyPress to the WordPress Foundation.[6]
Its
remote workingculture 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.[7]
On November 21, 2016, Automattic, via a subsidiary company (Knock Knock, WHOIS There) managed the launch and later development of the
.blog gTLD, thus becoming a domain registrar.[8]
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.[9]
In August 2019, Automattic closed a deal with
Verizon Media to acquire
Tumblr.[10] Mullenweg stated that he saw Tumblr as an "on-ramp" for WordPress adoption.[11]
In September of the same year, Automattic announced a Series D funding round of $300 million from
Salesforce, increasing its valuation to US$3 billion.[12]
Ending in February 2021, Automattic brought in US$288 million from a primary funding round. Subsequently, the company participated in a stock buyback, with the company valued at US$7.5 billion.[13]
In February 2024, it was reported that the company would begin selling user data from Tumblr and
WordPress.com to
Midjourney and
OpenAI.[14]
Products
Some notable Automattic brands and products include: