Mike Cannon-Brookes | |
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Born | Michael Cannon-Brookes 17 November 1979 New Haven, Connecticut, U.S. |
Nationality | Australian |
Education | Cranbrook School |
Alma mater | University of New South Wales |
Occupation | CEO of Atlassian |
Employer |
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Known for | Co-founding Atlassian |
Board member of | Atlassian |
Spouse(s) | Annie Todd (m. 2010;sep. 2023) |
Children | 4 |
Awards |
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Website | atlassian |
Michael Cannon-Brookes (born 17 November 1979) is an Australian businessman who is the co-founder and chief executive officer of 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 Twiggy Forrest.
Michael Cannon-Brookes was born on 17 November 1979, [1] [2] the son of a global banking executive, also named Mike, and his wife, Helen. [3] He attended Cranbrook School in Sydney, [4] and graduated from the University of New South Wales [5] with a bachelor's degree in information systems on a UNSW co-op scholarship. [6] [7]
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. [8]
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. [9] 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. [10] [11]
Their first major Atlassian product was Jira, an issue- and project-tracking software. [12] 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. [12] As of 2016, the company still did not have a traditional sales force, investing instead in research and development. [13]
In 2005, they opened an office in New York, where most of their clients were. [12] Later in 2005 they moved the U.S. office to San Francisco, [14] which had a much larger pool of relevant technical talent. [12]
Their first external funding for Atlassian was a US$60 million round from Accel in 2010. [15] In 2014, they redomiciled the company to the UK, in advance of an initial public offering (IPO). [16]
Atlassian made its debut on the Nasdaq stock exchange in December 2015, [17] with a market capitalisation of $4.37 billion. [18] The IPO made Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar Australia's first tech startup billionaires and household names in Australia. [19] [20] [21]
Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar redomiciled Atlassian to the United States in 2022. [16] Since September 2024, Cannon-Brookes is the sole CEO of the company after Farquhar stepped down as co-CEO. [22] [23]
Cannon-Brookes is a major investor in green projects. [24]
In October 2021, Cannon-Brookes 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. [25]
Cannon-Brookes started Grok Ventures in 2016 as a private investing vehicle. In February 2024, it was announced that Grok Ventures had appointed Tan Kueh as CEO, and that the organisation was accepting third party capital to drive a bigger impact on climate change. [26]
Grok Ventures is focused on climate tech, venture and infrastructure, and lighthouse investments.
In March 2022, Cannon-Brookes (through Grok Ventures) 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. [27] [28]
In 2023, Grok Ventures purchased a majority stake in Australian publicly listed energy company AGL, Australia’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, in a move to force the company to de-carbonise more quickly.
In December 2020, Cannon-Brookes bought a minority stake in NBA team Utah Jazz, along with Qualtrics co-founder Ryan Smith.
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. [29] [30]
Cannon-Brookes is an adjunct professor at the University of New South Wales' School of Computer Science and Engineering. [31]
In September 2020, it was revealed that Cannon-Brookes was listed on a Chinese Government "Overseas Key Individuals Database" of prominent international individuals of interest for China.
Cannon-Brookes is Chairman of Blackbird Ventures, a venture capital firm. [32]
Cannon-Brookes married American fashion designer Annie Todd in 2010, and they have four children together. [33] [34] The couple first met at a Qantas lounge while flying from Sydney to San Francisco. [35] Cannon-Brookes and Todd lived in Sydney's eastern suburbs in Centennial Park. [11] 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. [36] 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. [37] His Centennial Park home sold for A$16.5 million. [38] In 2019 he purchased a house near Fairwater for A$12 million. [39] Cannon-Brookes separated from his wife Annie in July 2023. [33]
Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar were recognised as Ernst & Young's 2006 Australian Entrepreneur of the Year. [40] He is a member of The Forum of Young Global Leaders. [6] In 2023, he was recognized as one of the "Time100 climate person" [41]
In 2016, his net worth was estimated by Forbes on the list of Australia's 50 Richest people as US$1.69 billion; [42] by BRW Rich 200 as A$2.00 billion; [43] and by the Sunday Times Rich List as £906 million. [44] As of May 2023 [update] , the Australian Financial Review estimated his net worth was A$19.01 billion. [45] Meanwhile, in 2021, his net worth was assessed at US$13.7 billion by Forbes and at US$11.2 billion by Bloomberg . [46]
Year | BRW Rich 200 | Forbes Australia's 50 Richest | Sunday Times Rich List | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Rank | Net worth (A$) | Rank | Net worth (US$) | Rank | Net worth (£) | |
2013 [47] [48] | 190 | $0.25 billion | n/a | not listed | ||
2014 [49] [50] | 35 | $1.07 billion | n/a | not listed | ||
2015 [51] [52] | 42 | $1.14 billion | 25 | $1.10 billion | ||
2016 [43] [42] [44] | 18 | $2.00 billion | 14 | $1.69 billion | £906 million | |
2017 [53] [54] | 17 | $2.51 billion | 10 | $3.40 billion | ||
2018 [55] | 12 | $5.16 billion | 5 | |||
2019 [56] [57] [58] | 6 | $9.63 billion | 5 | $6.40 billion | ||
2020 [59] | 5 | $16.93 billion | ||||
2021 [60] [46] | 3 | $20.18 billion | $13.70 billion | |||
2022 | 3 | $27.80 billion | ||||
2023 [45] | 6 | $19.01 billion |
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