Today is my last day at Automattic as Head of AI, and my last day as Core AI lead for the WordPress project. Since the WPAI acquisition, it’s been an incredible ride and shocking to think that it’s been only a year and a half.
(And if you’re here because you heard I’m building something new – skip to the bottom for a sneak peek.)
So much has happened in Automattic and WordPress since. We formed Core AI, then built the AI Building Blocks, the last of which ships in WordPress 7.0. #core-ai’s Slack went from 0 to 1,000+ people, contributor day tables were overflowing, and ~3,942+ commits / ~2,330+ stars (real numbers calculated by Claude) were made to the AI work for WordPress. At Automattic, we released AI website builders, built-in agents, code editors, agentic commerce support, conversational analytics for the largest publishers on the internet, MCPs… the list can go on. Our teams went from ~10 folks working on a few projects when I joined to ~70 building impressive, interconnected work all in tandem. The incredible pace and the talented people that made it happen were a privilege to get to work with each day – be it async, or from the NYC (and SF) office.
I’d like to say thank you – to so many folks, it would be impossible to list them here. Leadership for the opportunity to learn and lead at scale myself. Our teams in Automattic, and contributors in the project for the trust in me, and the support and enthusiasm of our work, despite a lot of unknowns and continual change. My mentors and friends, Matias, Matt, Rich, Jason, and many more for the guidance and advice. And for those that will continue to garden what we’ve helped seed and grow.
I wrote in an internal memo; the company has an incredible future ahead of it. In my opinion, (good) brand, legacy, taste and distribution matter more in an era when code is effectively free, and there’s a real reason to defend the concept of the Open Web, while building what’s next – which to me, is the Agentic Web. There’s a lot of thinking on this concept here on the blog, and I’m really glad I had the chance to really crystallize that in this year’s WCAsia Keynote. Automattic has all four of those qualities on display and there’s no better group than those that I’ve worked with during my tenure to build what the internet should become (and the ongoing Radical Speed Month deliveries prove it).
And, while this sentiment absolutely aligns with Company and our great products over at WordPress.com and WooCommerce (for those out of the industry; Automattic’s hosting for the foundation of the internet, and the second largest ecommerce platform, after Shopify), it’s almost more applicable to the WordPress project in general. We have something special, and important. It’s essential that it remains the foundation of an open, decentralized internet – and I think the work we’ve done in Core AI has put us in a position to keep building towards that goal of democratizing publishing (and now, representation too) in this new AI era.
I’m excited to remain close to this work and mission in an advisory role, but at the same time, see this as a closing chapter. For my true day-to-day, I will transition out of WordPress to deeply focus on something new.
What’s next really excites me, and I’m getting started right away with an immensely talented group of folks pursuing some really big, hard and impactful problems. I’ll get into what we’re working on in a future post, but if complex systems, foundational models, time 🦋, true AI research, and applications of it in the real world excite you, please do reach out. We’re assembling an avengers-level in person team based in NYC and Boston. You’ll hear all about it on my Twitter soon 🙂
