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Lawsuits

Mullenweg’s “full nuclear” message

by CranDiscuss

According to court documents publicly refiled September 30, Matt Mullenweg was talking about going “full nuclear with WPE,” with “partnerships/merger/M&A as an exit,” before the WordPress feud went public.

The August 15, 2024 Slack message was put to Mullenweg during his deposition. He said he didn’t recall it but could see it in the document; he wanted more context before explaining “full nuclear.”

Another refiled exhibit opens a window onto WordPress.org’s “Mission Control” dashboard. Automattic CTO Barry Abrahamson testified that it graphed active installations of rival WP Engine’s ACF Pro plugin “that WordPress.org knows about.” The data came through WordPress.org’s API; he said it was anonymized and aggregated before storage.

Matt Mullenweg (deposition testimony), U.S. District Court, Northern District of California / CourtListener
ECF 418-1: Mullenweg deposition excerpts, refiled September 30, 2026
Barry Abrahamson (deposition testimony), U.S. District Court, Northern District of California / CourtListener
ECF 419: Abrahamson deposition excerpts, refiled September 30, 2026
Filed underAutomatticMatt MullenwegWP Engine
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Internal memos · Lawsuits

Court revives antitrust claims against Automattic, citing internal ‘carrot and stick’ message

by BernsteinDiscuss
Satirical portrait of Matt Mullenweg against an orange brush blot.

“If they don’t take the carrot we’ll give them the stick.”

That’s internal correspondence quoted by WP Engine and reproduced in a September 24 court order reviving its antitrust claims against Automattic and Matt Mullenweg.

The carrot was a trademark license: WP Engine could pay Automattic a percentage of its revenue. The stick? Well, as we saw, Mullenweg: blasted WP Engine at WordCamp US, blocked its access to WordPress.org, and added a login checkbox requiring users to declare they weren’t affiliated with WP Engine. In WP Engine’s account, that’s what refusing the carrot got you.

WP Engine alleges at least 11 competitors were targeted for multimillion-dollar deals. The order recounts an alleged “Restriction of choice plan”—a remarkably candid name for something happening around open-source software.

Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín found the allegations sufficient to let four antitrust claims proceed. The WordPress.org checkbox requiring users to deny any affiliation with WP Engine also supports a plausible illegal-tying claim: access conditioned on not dealing with a competitor.

These remain allegations, not a liability finding. In the order, Automattic also won dismissal of WP Engine’s computer-fraud-law extortion claim without leave to amend.

Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California
WP Engine v. Automattic: Order re Motions to Dismiss — September 24, 2026
Filed underAraceli Martínez-OlguínAutomatticMatt MullenwegWordpressWP Engine
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