Michael Cannon-Brookes (born 17 November 1979) is an Australian businessman who is the co-founder and chief executive officer of the software company Atlassian.
Since 2018, he has been involved in the Australia-Asia Power Link, a huge electricity infrastructure project to be developed in the Northern Territory by Sun Cable in a collaboration with the Australian businessman Twiggy Forrest.
Early life and education
Michael Cannon-Brookes was born on 17 November 1979 in Connecticut, US.[1][2][3] The son of a global banking executive, also named Mike, and his wife Helen, he is the youngest of three siblings, with two sisters.[4][3] His family relocated to Taiwan when he was six months old, and to Hong Kong when he was three; he later attended boarding school in England.[3][5] He attended Cranbrook School in Sydney,[6] and graduated from the University of New South Wales[7] with a bachelor's degree in information systems on a UNSW co-op scholarship.[8][9]
Career
Before founding Atlassian, Cannon-Brookes co-founded an internet bookmark management tool called The Bookmark Box with his university classmate Niki Scevak. The Bookmark Box was sold to Blink.com in 2000.[5]
Cannon-Brookes co-founded Atlassian, a collaboration software company, of which he is co-CEO, with Scott Farquhar. The pair started the company in 2002, shortly after graduating from university, funding it with credit cards.[10] They have said they founded Atlassian with the aim of earning the then-typical graduate starting salary of A$48,000 at the big corporations without having to work for someone else.[11][12]
Their first major Atlassian product was Jira, an issue- and project-tracking software.[13] They decided to forgo the expense of hiring sales people, and instead spent their time and money on building a good product and selling it at a more affordable price via the Atlassian website.[13] As of 2016, the company still did not have a traditional sales force, investing instead in research and development.[14]
In 2005, they opened an office in New York, where most of their clients were.[13] Later in 2005 they moved the U.S. office to San Francisco,[15] which had a much larger pool of relevant technical talent.[13]
Their first external funding for Atlassian was a US$60 million round from Accel in 2010.[16] In 2014, they redomiciled the company to the UK, in advance of an initial public offering (IPO).[17]
Atlassian made its debut on the Nasdaq stock exchange in December 2015,[18] with a market capitalisation of $4.37 billion.[19] The IPO made Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar Australia's first tech startup billionaires and household names in Australia.[20][21][22]
Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar redomiciled Atlassian to the United States in 2022.[17] Since September 2024, Cannon-Brookes is the sole CEO of the company after Farquhar stepped down as co-CEO.[23][24] As of 2024[update], he owns approximately 20% of Atlassian, with super-voting shares.[25]
Other activities
Cannon-Brookes started Grok Ventures in 2016 as a family office.[26] He is a major investor in green projects through his private investing vehicle.[27] In October 2021, he pledged to donate and invest $1.5 billion on climate projects by 2030 to reinforce the COP26 goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.[28]
Cannon-Brookes is an adjunct professor at the University of New South Wales' School of Computer Science and Engineering.[29] He is also the chairman of Blackbird Ventures, a venture capital firm.[30]
In March 2022, Cannon-Brookes and billionaire Andrew Forrest invested in the Sun Cable project, to build a solar and battery farm 12,000 hectares (120 km2) in size at Powell Creek, Northern Territory, and a power-cable to link it to Singapore (via Indonesia) leaving Australia at Murrumujuk beach. In January 2023, Sun Cable went into administration owing to disagreements between Cannon-Brookes and Forrest, and in May 2023, Grok Ventures outbid Forrest and others to buy the liquidated company.[33][34]
In 2022, Cannon-Brookes became the largest shareholder of the Australian publicly listed energy company AGL, Australia's largest greenhouse gas emitter, in a move to force the company to de-carbonise more quickly.[35][36]
In November 2021, Cannon-Brookes bought a one-third share of Blackcourt League Investments. Blackcourt owns 75% of the Australian Rugby League team, the South Sydney Rabbitohs.[38][39]
Personal life
Cannon-Brookes married American fashion designer Annie Todd in 2010, and they have four children together.[40][41] The couple first met at a Qantas lounge while flying from Sydney to San Francisco.[42] Cannon-Brookes and Todd lived in Sydney's eastern suburbs in Centennial Park.[12] In 2018 they bought Fairwater, Australia's most expensive house for approximately A$100 million, next door to Scott Farquhar's A$71 million Point Piper harbourside mansion, Elaine. Cannon-Brookes also acquired the 1923-built heritage residence Verona, designed by architect Leslie Wilkinson and located in Double Bay, for A$17 million.[43] The house previously belonged to New Zealand philanthropist Pat Goodman. Prior to that, in 2016, Cannon-Brookes had bought the A$7.05 million SeaDragon house, built in 1936, also designed by Wilkinson and updated by architect Luigi Rosselli.[44] His Centennial Park home sold for A$16.5 million.[45] In 2019 he purchased a house near Fairwater for A$12 million.[46] Cannon-Brookes separated from his wife Annie in July 2023.[40]
