Australian software giant Atlassian will shed around 1600 jobs in a major restructuring as artificial intelligence comes to the fore.
The company announced that around 10% of roles will go. Its global workforce sits at around 16,000 people.
CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes sent an email to all staff 20 minutes before those losing their jobs were informed by email saying “I have made the incredibly difficult decision to reduce the size of our team by ~10%”
“We are doing this to self-fund further investment in AI and enterprise sales, while strengthening our financial profile. We’re also changing the way we work and reorganising around our System of Work to move faster,” he told them.
Cannon-Brookes said “things have changed” in the AI era.
“The bar for what ‘great’”’ looks like for software companies – on growth, on profitability, on speed, on value creation – has gone up,” he said.
“We are choosing to adapt. Thoughtfully, decisively and quickly. To drive durable, profitable growth.”
The cofounder and CEO said it was not an “AI replaces people” approach.
“But it would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn’t change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas. It does,” he said.
“This is primarily about adaptation. We are reshaping our skill mix and changing how we work to build for the future.”
Share price perks up
Atlassian estimates restructure will cost it around US$225-236 million, including US$169-174m in employee severance costs and $56-62m in exit charges from office space reductions.
While Cannon-Brookes painted a strong growth story in the loss-making company’s latest Q2 results, Atlassian’s share price has been hammered over the past year, falling by two-thirds, and dropping 50% in 2026, shrinking the company’s market cap below US$20 billion – making it worth less than privately owned Canva.
Atlassian’s share price rose around 2% in after hours trade following the announcement.
It’s also wiped billions from the personal wealth of cofounder Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar, chair of the Tech Council of Australia.
The latest round of redundancies come after Atlassian shed Atlassian cut 150 roles, primarily in customer service and support, last July, replaced by AI, then a further 200 roles in Europe in September.
Its last major restructure was this time three years ago when 500 roles were lost in a “rebalance”.
But Atlassian is not alone in what’s being dubbed the “SaaSpocalypse” caused by AI.
Last month Sydney-based logistics software company, WiseTech Global, announced it was cutting 2,000 jobs, nearly a third of its global workforce across 40 countries, as part of a two-year AI-driven restructure. The Commonwealth Bank made 300 technology roles redundant on the same day and a few days later global fintech Block said it would cut its workforce by 40%, shedding 4000 jobs
Cannon-Brookes concluded his message to staff saying that decisiveness was part of the company’s success.
For over two decades, we’ve demonstrated our durability, our growth, and our resilience. We’ve built products that millions of people rely on every single day,” he said.
” We’ve navigated – and thrived through – multiple technology shifts. Multiple market cycles. And we will again.
“This will require continual adaptation. Decisiveness. And making hard decisions to set Atlassian up strongly for the long term.”
