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Michael Cannon-brookes

Co-Founder, CEO & Director, Atlassian

Search every verified Michael Cannon-brookes interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-founder and CEO of Atlassian, discussed the company's AI strategy and product direction in a September 2026 Decoder podcast interview. He described the Dia browser, which Atlassian acquired from The Browser Company for over $600 million, as an operating system-like interface that helps users manage work tasks by cross-referencing data from tools like Slack, Confluence, LinkedIn, and Salesforce. He said Dia is in beta on Windows with general availability expected soon and is used daily by a large number of Mac users. Cannon-Brookes also pushed back on the "SaaSpocalypse" narrative that AI would eliminate enterprise software companies, arguing that most businesses are complex and that AI would augment rather than replace existing tools. He characterized some claims about AI-driven organizational restructuring as "three parts snake oil, two parts bull." In August 2026, after Atlassian reported a 26% revenue increase to $6.57 billion and a quarterly profit of $139 million, which drove a 32% share price surge, Cannon-Brookes said the results showed lessons in being too quick to judge companies affected by generative AI. He stated that "AI is one of the best things to ever happen to Atlassian" and noted the company uses more than 70 AI models in production, blending them to solve customer problems without capital expenditure on data centers. During the Q4 2026 earnings call, he highlighted that Rovo is used by over 80% of the Fortune 500 and that customers are making longer commitments and larger deals, attributing the performance to "many years of hard work" rather than a single unlock.

Recent appearances

Notable quotes

“I think if a frontier model is capable of coming and running the entire business for you, even assume four or five years worth of increase, you have a relatively simple business, right? If it's truly running the whole thing. Most businesses aren't simple. They are global conglomerations of rules, compliance laws, staff in different places. Human inconsistency, which is the same way as saying human creativity, by the ”

“We don't have any capital expenditure on data centers as a business. Our job is to apply the blend of those models. So, not one model, but many. We have more than 70 in production at the moment.”

“We're seeing up to a 44% improvement in answer quality... and up to a 48% reduction in the number of tokens used. That's straight money.”

“We are now expecting a trough in total revenue growth in FY27. Number two, we expect that to significantly reacelerate in FY28 as we lap that data center effect going through. And given these dynamics, the three-year 20% CAGR that we set two and a bit years ago is no longer a relevant target to anchor on.”

“We now expect negative data center revenue growth in 27. We've pulled all that forward which is a great thing for us. So I tried to explain this both open no and I'll give you some illustrative charts. I thought I'd say all that so you were listening and I saw you writing before I showed you the charts. Uh so this is an illustrative revenue growth. Number one, we're expecting a trough in total revenue growth in FY27.”

“Look, I think um the world is trying to work out how to rate or value software businesses in a highly disruptive stage, right? And everyone h has hot takes about what the future's going to look like, right? And depending on the takes, you get a version of the future that's either really good or really bad for all of software, certain companies, certain categories in software.”

Other executives at Atlassian

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