@Jeffro - That isn't how venture capital funding works. They don't give you millions of dollars because they are nice people. While smaller angel investments typically do not see a large chunk of ownership change hands, venture capital investments typically do.

I can assure you that the almost $30 million that Automattic raised in their last venture capital funding round involved ownership in the company. It's also been mentioned that a chunk of that money went directly to Automattic's founders to buy out some of their ownership and enable them to "cash out" early. Translation: Matt pocketed a nice chunk of that $30 million and cashed out some of his shares.

You can read more here:

http://gigaom.com/2008/01/22/wordpresscom-creator-raises-29m/

So ultimately if Automattic's investors wanted an exit, you can be sure they would get one.