I genuinely thought Automattic is already profitable, is it not?
This funding round is less about securing long-term profitability and more about long-term partnerships and scaling their portfolio of products[1] deeper into other third-parties such as Salesforce (and beyond):
> “The problem we’re tying to solve is likely multigenerational. It can take the rest of our lives and we need to pass it on to the generation that comes after to continue to work on it. Hopefully for the rest of humanity because I can’t imagine a time when humanity cannot benefit from an open, free, connected web,” Mullenweg told me.
> When it comes to today’s funding round, Salesforce Ventures isn’t your traditional investor — and Mullenweg is well aware of that. There could be some partnerships and integrations between Salesforce and Automattic in the future.
I'm curious what portion of the employees are development folks.
granted, i'm not trying to make a business selling wordpress templates, or trying to use wordpress in some way other than just as a blog. but a lot of the gutenberg criticism seems to be of the "i hate this because it's new" variety.