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Australia Mike Cannon-Brookes is a co-founder and CEO of Atlassian, a global software company, and an active investor in green energy projects and sporting ventures.
Atlassian has announced a major partnership with Britain's Williams Racing. This marks the biggest deal in the team's 48-year history, making Atlassian the Official Title Partner and Official Technology Partner, aimed at unleashing the power of teamwork together.
Atlassian has entered into an agreement to acquire The Browser Company of New York, the team behind the Dia and Arc browsers. Mike Cannon-Brookes announced that Atlassian is welcoming The Browser Company to its portfolio.
Mike Cannon-Brookes bought a minority stake in NBA team Utah Jazz, along with Qualtrics co-founder Ryan Smith.
Mike Cannon-Brookes bought a one-third share of Blackcourt League Investments, which owns 75% of the Australian Rugby League team, the South Sydney Rabbitohs.
Mike Cannon-Brookes and Andrew Forrest invested in the Sun Cable project, aiming to build a solar and battery farm in the Northern Territory and a power-cable to link it to Singapore. After disagreements, Grok Ventures, Cannon-Brookes' firm, outbid Forrest to buy the liquidated company in May 2023.
In 2022, Cannon-Brookes became the largest shareholder of the Australian publicly listed energy company AGL, Australia's biggest greenhouse gas emitter, with the intention of forcing the company to decarbonise more rapidly.
Michael Cannon-Brookes was born on November 17, 1979, in New Haven, Connecticut. The youngest of three siblings, his family moved to Taiwan when he was six months old, then to Hong Kong at three. He later attended boarding school in England and Cranbrook School in Sydney, before graduating from the University of New South Wales with a bachelor’s degree in information systems. Prior to co-founding Atlassian, Cannon-Brookes co-founded The Bookmark Box, an internet bookmark management tool, with university classmate Niki Scevak. The Bookmark Box was sold to Blink.com in 2000.
In 2002, Cannon-Brookes co-founded Atlassian with Scott Farquhar, right after graduating from university. The company was started with the aim of earning a typical graduate salary without working for others, funding their venture with credit cards. Their initial product was Jira, an issue and project-tracking software. They focused on building a quality product and selling it affordably online, opting against a traditional sales force and instead investing in research and development. In 2005, Atlassian opened an office in New York, which later moved to San Francisco to access a larger pool of technical talent. The company secured its first external funding of US$60 million from Accel in 2010. By 2014, Atlassian redomiciled to the UK in preparation for an initial public offering (IPO).
Atlassian debuted on the Nasdaq stock exchange in December 2015, achieving a market capitalization of $4.37 billion. This IPO established Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar as Australia’s first tech startup billionaires. In 2022, Atlassian redomiciled to the United States. As of September 2024, Cannon-Brookes became the sole CEO of Atlassian following Farquhar’s departure. He owns approximately 20% of the company, holding super-voting shares. Beyond Atlassian, Cannon-Brookes established Grok Ventures in 2016 as a family office, focusing on green projects, and pledged $1.5 billion towards climate initiatives by 2030, forming Boundless Earth in 2022. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of New South Wales and chairman of Blackbird Ventures. His other ventures include acquiring a significant stake in AGL Energy in 2022 to accelerate its decarbonization, investing in the Sun Cable project, and owning minority stakes in the NBA team Utah Jazz and the Australian Rugby League team South Sydney Rabbitohs.
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