State of the Word 2025: WordPress AI Strategy and the Future of the Open Web

On December 2, 2025, I joined approximately 45 WordPress community members at the top of San Francisco’s Salesforce Tower for one of the most exclusive events in WordPress history. State of the Word 2025 was invite-only, held at an undisclosed location, and delivered something the project had never attempted before: a live on-stage release of WordPress 6.9.

As Senior Manager of Marketing Operations at InMotion Hosting, I had the privilege of witnessing firsthand how WordPress is positioning itself for the next two decades of the open web.

An Intimate Setting for a Major Announcement

The twentieth State of the Word felt different from previous years. With roughly 45 attendees representing hosting companies, plugin developers, agencies, WordPress contributors, and Foundation board members, the atmosphere was intimate yet charged with significance. We gathered on the Salesforce Tower’s 59th floor, treated to panoramic views of San Francisco, including the Golden Gate Bridge.

Due to security concerns, photography was restricted inside the event space. We could capture the breathtaking cityscape, but not the presentations themselves. This created a unique environment where attendees were fully present, engaged in the moment rather than documenting it.

WordPress has always been about democratizing publishing. Being in a room with only 45 people who represent millions of WordPress users felt like a distillation of that mission. Every person there carried the voice of a much larger community.

A Jazz-Inspired Celebration of Convergence

From the pre-event marketing materials to the on-site experience, a cohesive design theme wove throughout: concentric circles with parallel grooves echoing the surface of a vinyl record. This visual motif paid tribute to WordPress’s tradition of naming major releases after notable jazz musicians. WordPress 6.9, released live during the event, carries the codename “Gene” in honor of jazz drummer Gene Krupa.

The event organizers created interactive moments that reinforced this musical connection. Attendees selected vintage vinyl records and painted them on spinning wheels. I called this activity “vibe vinyling” in the spirit of “vibe coding,” the AI-assisted development approach that has become common among developers. We also received themed swag, including tote bags, t-shirts, and enamel pins featuring spinning records.

WordPress by the Numbers: Continued Market Dominance

Matt Mullenweg opened with statistics that reinforced WordPress’s position as the foundation of the open web. The platform now powers 43% of all websites globally with approximately 60% CMS market share. For context, Shopify, the second-largest CMS, holds 6.8% market share.

Among the top 1,000 websites worldwide, WordPress adoption climbed to 49.4%, up 2.3% from the previous year. Japan emerged as a particularly strong market, with WordPress powering 58.5% of all Japanese websites and commanding 83% CMS market share in that region. Japanese became the second most-used language on WordPress, and for the first time, over 56% of WordPress sites operate in languages other than English.

The plugin ecosystem showed explosive growth with over 60,000 plugins now available in the directory, a 68% increase in approved plugins since 2024. Plugin downloads are projected to reach 2.1 billion by year-end. Block themes crossed the 1,000 threshold with a 40% adoption rate among WordPress users.

The Live Release of WordPress 6.9

The most memorable moment came when release leads gathered on stage to press the release button for WordPress 6.9 “Gene.” The room counted down together, and within hours, over 700,000 sites had already updated to the new version. Shipping a major WordPress release live, on stage, without incident, demonstrated the reliability and trust the community has built into its processes over two decades.

WordPress 6.9 introduced several collaboration-focused features including block editor notes for inline comments on specific blocks, email notifications for collaboration, and improved drag-and-drop interactions. Developer-focused additions included the Abilities API, HTML API improvements, and Interactivity API maturation for smoother client-side interactions.

WordPress Takes AI Seriously

The most significant announcement for hosting providers and agencies was WordPress’s comprehensive AI strategy. James LePage, who leads Automattic’s dedicated AI team formed in mid-2025, presented four foundational “building blocks” that shipped in WordPress 6.9:

• Abilities API creates a unified registry describing WordPress capabilities across PHP, REST endpoints, the command palette, and future AI-driven interactions. This standardization allows AI systems to understand what WordPress can do in a structured, machine-readable format.
• WP AI Client provides an abstraction layer for communicating with any generative AI provider, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Developers write prompts once; site owners configure their preferred provider. This provider-agnostic approach ensures flexibility as AI models evolve.
• MCP Adapter bridges the Abilities API with AI providers through the Model Context Protocol, enabling AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT to understand and act within WordPress safely and predictably.
• AI Experiments Plugin is now available on WordPress.org, providing end-user AI features and serving as a reference implementation for developers building AI-powered tools.

Beyond the AI-specific building blocks, WordPress 6.9 introduced two additional APIs that strengthen the platform’s technical foundation:

• HTML API introduces new ways of working with and modifying HTML server-side. The API ensures safer, more reliable handling, lowering the barrier for theme and block developers who work with dynamic or structured markup.
• Interactivity API delivers smoother, faster interactions without requiring heavy JavaScript frameworks. Improved routing, better state management, and clearer conventions help developers create rich, modern interfaces without leaving the WordPress philosophy of simplicity and flexibility.

What impressed me most about WordPress’s AI approach is the architectural decision to remain provider-agnostic. They’re building infrastructure that adapts to whichever AI models prove most effective, rather than betting everything on a single provider. That’s the kind of forward-thinking that has kept WordPress relevant for 20 years.

Why AI-Generated Websites Won’t Replace WordPress

During networking sessions, conversations frequently turned to AI website builders like Lovable, Bolt, and similar tools that promise to generate complete websites from natural language prompts. My perspective differs from the alarmist takes circulating in tech media.

I don’t see AI-generated websites as an immediate threat to WordPress. Tools like Lovable and Bolt are nowhere near as mature as they need to be for serious business use unless you have a full-stack development team behind you to troubleshoot issues and achieve a truly seamless deployment workflow. For most businesses, the gaps in SEO readiness, deployment pipelines, and collaboration features make these tools impractical without significant technical resources.

The technical limitations are significant. AI-generated sites often rely heavily on React and client-side rendering, making them nearly invisible to search engines and crawlers. For businesses that depend on organic search traffic, this limitation represents a fundamental barrier to adoption.

It is critical to have a website that can be consumed by crawlers so businesses can be present in search engines, LLMs, AI overviews, and beyond. WordPress sites are inherently more SEO-friendly because they render server-side content that crawlers can index. Most AI website builders haven’t solved this problem yet.

That said, WordPress could strengthen its competitive position by becoming more SEO-native rather than depending on plugins for basic optimization. As users increasingly interact with content through AI assistants and search features, WordPress would benefit from building these capabilities directly into core.

WooCommerce and the AI Search Opportunity

One statistic from Matt Mullenweg’s presentation stood out for its implications on e-commerce hosting: WooCommerce now runs on 8.9% of all websites globally, processing tens of billions in annual gross merchandise value. For perspective, Shopify holds 6.8% market share. WooCommerce powers more online stores than any other platform.

This massive footprint is about to intersect with a fundamental shift in product discovery. On November 24, 2025, OpenAI launched shopping research in ChatGPT, a feature that creates personalized buyer’s guides by researching products across the web. It is powered by GPT-5 mini, trained with reinforcement learning specifically for shopping tasks.

Major retailers including Walmart and Target are already collaborating with OpenAI to ensure their products appear appropriately in this new ecosystem. As AI shopping assistants proliferate across platforms like Perplexity and Google, smaller WooCommerce merchants face an urgent window to establish AI visibility before the optimization playbook becomes commoditized.

The convergence of WooCommerce’s market position and AI-powered shopping represents a major opportunity for hosting providers. The merchants who optimize their product data and site performance now will have a significant advantage as AI assistants become the default starting point for purchase research.

E-commerce AI tools are changing the early-stage shopping funnel before users even reach traditional search engines. AI-driven discovery puts pressure on the technical foundation of online stores. Retailers on any platform need cleaner product data, faster site performance, and tighter integrations if they want their catalogs to surface in AI recommendations.

What WordPress Leadership Is Asking of the Ecosystem

James LePage made two direct asks to the WordPress ecosystem during his presentation. He encouraged plugin developers to adopt the Abilities API and expose existing functionality to AI assistants through standardized interfaces. He also urged hosting providers to track the WP AI Client closely, noting that three major hosts have already committed to bundling AI credits into their plans.

WordPress 7.0, targeted for early 2026, will integrate the WP AI Client directly into core. This shift signals that AI capabilities are moving from premium add-on territory toward expected infrastructure, similar to how SSL certificates evolved from paid extras to baseline requirements.

Watching WordPress leadership lay out this roadmap reinforced how quickly AI is becoming table stakes for the industry. The next year will reveal which approaches resonate most with WordPress users and site builders.

Conversations on Leadership and Community

Beyond the technical announcements, State of the Word 2025 provided valuable networking time before and after the main presentation. I had the opportunity to speak with Mary Hubbard, WordPress Foundation Executive Director, about equitable female leadership and empowerment in open source communities.

Mary opened the event by reflecting on her first full year as Executive Director, emphasizing how WordPress grows because people choose to participate, learn by doing, and support others along the way. Her statement that “WordPress doesn’t run on servers, it runs on people who show up” captured the spirit of the gathering.

The event also highlighted WordPress’s educational initiatives. Learn.WordPress.org served over 1.5 million learners this year with average engagement time up 32%. The Campus Connect program is bringing WordPress into universities, with students at Costa Rica’s Universidad Fidélitas now earning academic credit for contributing to open source.

Looking Forward: The Next 20 Years

Matt Mullenweg closed the event with a message that has stayed with me since leaving San Francisco. WordPress aims to remain the center of the open web for the next 20 years by creating foundational systems that adapt as AI transforms content consumption and creation.

“Fight for freedom, fight for an open web,” he said as the event concluded.

The investments WordPress is making in AI infrastructure, collaboration features, and developer tooling position the platform to meet that goal. For hosting providers, agencies, and developers, the message is clear: the future of WordPress includes AI as a core capability, not an afterthought.

State of the Word 2025 demonstrated that WordPress understands both the opportunity and the responsibility that comes with powering 43% of the web. The platform that democratized publishing is now working to democratize AI, ensuring these powerful tools remain accessible to creators and businesses of all sizes.