Automattic CEO calls Tumblr acquisition his biggest failure
What's the story
Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, has called the company's acquisition of Tumblr his biggest failure. The admission came during a recent Town Hall session at the WordCamp Canada 2025 conference. Despite the setback, Mullenweg remains hopeful about Tumblr's future and is still working on making it a success story for Automattic.
Technical hurdles
Tumblr's financial status and technical stack
Mullenweg revealed that Tumblr still runs on a different technical stack than WordPress, something he had planned to change by migrating its back end to WordPress infrastructure. However, the move was halted earlier this year due to the high cost of transferring over 500 million blogs from Tumblr. The blogging platform isn't profitable yet and is being kept afloat by profits from other Automattic products.
Sustainability attempts
Efforts to make Tumblr sustainable
To make Tumblr sustainable, Automattic has tried cutting costs with layoffs and reallocating resources to more profitable parts of the business. However, these efforts haven't yet paid off. Mullenweg acknowledged this at the Town Hall session, saying he needs to switch Tumblr over to WordPress but it's a huge task considering the number of blogs involved and its current financial performance.
Future prospects
Potential benefits of switching to WordPress
Mullenweg said that if Tumblr were to move to the WordPress back end, it would be easier and cheaper to run. This move would also help integrate the service into the open social web known as fediverse. He also talked about other projects at Automattic like Playground, which lets you run WordPress entirely in a web browser, and Beeper, a universal messaging app by Automattic.
Legal matters
Mullenweg's thoughts on WP Engine legal issues and AI
Mullenweg also addressed the legal issues with WP Engine, a WordPress hosting company accused by Automattic of profiting from the open-source ecosystem without giving back. He proposed that Automattic should create more incentive systems to encourage contributions and good behavior. On AI, he said "We're not putting the genie back in the bottle" with this technology and suggested tagging images made with AI in the WordPress theme directory.