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Mike Cannon-Brookes

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Mike Cannon-Brookes
Cannon-Brookes in 2018
BornMichael Cannon-Brookes
(1979-11-17) 17 November 1979 (age 44)
New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.
NationalityAustralian
EducationCranbrook School
Alma materUniversity of New South Wales
OccupationCEO of Atlassian
Employer
Known forCo-founding Atlassian
Board member ofAtlassian
Spouse(s)
Annie Todd
​
​
(m. 2010; sep. 2023)​
Children4
Awards
Websiteatlassian.com

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.

Early life and education

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]

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.[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]

Other activities

Cannon-Brookes is a major investor in green projects.[24] 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.[25]

Cannon-Brookes is an adjunct professor at the University of New South Wales' School of Computer Science and Engineering.[26] He is also the chairman of Blackbird Ventures, a venture capital firm.[27]

In September 2020, it was revealed that Cannon-Brookes was among 35,000 Australians on a Chinese Government "Overseas Key Individuals Database" of prominent international individuals of interest for China.[28][29]

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.[30][31]

In 2023, Cannon-Brookes 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.[citation needed]

Sports

In December 2020, Cannon-Brookes bought a minority stake in NBA team Utah Jazz, along with Qualtrics co-founder Ryan Smith.[32]

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.[33][34]

Personal life

Cannon-Brookes married American fashion designer Annie Todd in 2010, and they have four children together.[35][36] The couple first met at a Qantas lounge while flying from Sydney to San Francisco.[37] 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.[38] 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.[39] His Centennial Park home sold for A$16.5 million.[40] In 2019 he purchased a house near Fairwater for A$12 million.[41] Cannon-Brookes separated from his wife Annie in July 2023.[35]

Recognition

Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar were recognised as Ernst & Young's 2006 Australian Entrepreneur of the Year.[42] He is a member of The Forum of Young Global Leaders.[6] In 2023, he was recognized as one of the "Time100 climate person" [43]

Net worth

In 2016, his net worth was estimated by Forbes on the list of Australia's 50 Richest people as US$1.69 billion;[44] by BRW Rich 200 as A$2.00 billion;[45] and by the Sunday Times Rich List as £906 million.[46] As of May 2023, the Australian Financial Review estimated his net worth was A$19.01 billion.[47] Meanwhile, in 2021, his net worth was assessed at US$13.7 billion by Forbes and at US$11.2 billion by Bloomberg.[48]

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[49][50] 190 Increase $0.25 billion Increase n/a not listed
2014[51][52] 35 Increase $1.07 billion Increase n/a not listed
2015[53][54] 42 Decrease $1.14 billion Increase 25 Increase $1.10 billion Increase
2016[45][44][46] 18 Increase $2.00 billion Increase 14 Increase $1.69 billion Increase £906 million Increase
2017[55][56] 17 Increase $2.51 billion Increase 10 Increase $3.40 billion Increase
2018[57] 12 Increase $5.16 billion Increase 5 Increase
2019[58][59][60] 6 Increase $9.63 billion Increase 5 Steady $6.40 billion Increase
2020[61] 5 Increase $16.93 billion Increase
2021[62][48] 3 Increase $20.18 billion Increase $13.70 billion Increase
2022 3 Steady $27.80 billion Increase
2023[47] 6 Decrease $19.01 billion Decrease
Legend
Icon Description
Steady Has not changed from the previous year
Increase Has increased from the previous year
Decrease Has decreased from the previous year

See also

References

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