Prior to this, Anthropic’s developments with Claude saw a number of software firms suffer, including Atlassian, when the AI giant announced new plugins for its Claude Cowork platform that would allow the agentic AI platform to be further tailored for performing specific tasks on user devices.

Over the past year, this has led to a total share price slump of 70 per cent for Atlassian. Together, Cannon-Brookes and former chief executive and co-founder Scott Farquhar have lost a joint total of $35 billion just this year, causing both of them to slip out of the top 10 richest people in the country.

Still, Cannon-Brookes remains bullish about AI, having terminated thousands of positions over the last year, with the latest 1,600 being axed just this month, all with the intention of increasing AI investment.

Of the 1,600 cut, 480 people, or roughly 30 per cent, are Australia-based.

“I believe this is the right decision for Atlassian. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Far from it,” said Cannon-Brookes.

“We are doing this to self-fund further investment in AI and enterprise sales, while strengthening our financial profile. We’re also changing the way we work and reorganising around our system of work to move faster.”

“We fundamentally believe people and AI create the best outcomes. Our approach is not ‘AI replaces people’. But it would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn’t change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas. It does.

“This is primarily about adaptation. We are reshaping our skill mix and changing how we work to build for the future.”

The round of terminations came to roughly $323 million in savings, and senior ex-Atlassian staff have spoken out about the redundancies.

“After 13 years, my journey at Atlassian has skidded to a halt,” said former engineering senior vice-president Andre Serna.

“I have taken the decision to leave the company – admitted [sic] accelerated by being laid off.”

Serna said he was collecting the details of other terminated staffers and would be organising a spreadsheet to assist them in finding new work.

“You are all awesome, and companies should be tripping over themselves to hire you,” Serna added.

With a much more enthusiastic tone, Atlassian chief technology officer Rajeev Rajan said he was “deeply grateful” to the Atlassian co-founders, despite also being made redundant.

“I’m excited by the current technology landscape – especially with the rapid acceleration of AI – and the opportunities it presents. Stay tuned for my next move,” he said.

Atlassian’s acknowledgement of the influence of AI on workforces is a changed stance from the previous round of job cuts.

In July 2025, Cannon-Brookes notified staff through a pre-recorded video that jobs were being terminated. It said that staff would need to wait 15 minutes to receive an email determining their future at the company.

Cyber Daily exclusively reported that Australian staff were included in the 150 axed.