Mike Cannon-Brookes

Michael Canon-Brookes (born 17 November 1979) is an Australian businessman who is the co-founder and chief executive officer of the software company Atlassian, a Forbes Global 2000 company.

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 businessman Twiggy Forrest.

Early life and education

Michael Canon-Brookes was born on 17 November 1979 in Connecticut, US.[1][2][3] The son of a British 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] He attended Cranbrook School in Sydney,[5] and graduated from the University of New South Wales[6] with a bachelor's degree in information systems on a UNSW co-op scholarship.[7][8]

Career

Before founding Atlassian, Canon-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.[9]

Canon-Brookes co-founded Atlassian, a collaboration software company, of which he is CEO. He and Scott Farquhar 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, a bug tracking, issue tracking and project-tracking software. 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]

Canon-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, he owns approximately 20% of Atlassian, with super-voting shares.[25]

Other activities

Canon-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] He also formed a climate fund called Boundless Earth in 2022.[29][30]

Cannon-Brookes is an adjunct professor at the University of New South Wales' School of Computer Science and Engineering.[31] He is also the chairman of Blackbird Ventures, a venture capital firm.[32]

In September 2020, it was revealed that Canon-Brookes was among 35,000 Australians on a Chinese Government "Overseas Key Individuals Database" of prominent international individuals of interest for China.[33][34]

In March 2022, Canon-Brookes and the 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.[35][36]

In 2022, Canon-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.[37][38]

Personal life

Canon-Brookes married Annie Todd, an American fashion designer, in 2010; they have four children together.[41][42] The couple first met at a Qantas lounge while flying from Sydney to San Francisco.[43] Canon-Brookes and Todd lived in Sydney's eastern suburbs in .[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. Canon-Brookes also acquired the 1923-built heritage residence Verona, designed by architect Leslie Wilkinson and located in Double Bay, for A$17 million.[44] 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.[45] His Centennial Park home sold for A$16.5 million.[46] In 2019 he purchased a house near Fairwater for A$12 million.[47] He owns a Bombardier Global 7500 jet.[48][49] Cannon-Brookes separated from his wife Annie in July 2023.[41]

Net worth

In 2016, Forbes listed him and his wife among Australia's 50 richest people with an estimated net worth of US$1.69 billion; BRW Rich 200 at A$2.00 billion; and the Sunday Times Rich List at GB£906 million.[52] Following his separation from Annie Cannon-Brookes, his net worth was reported by the Australian Financial Review in the 2025 Rich List at A$12.18 billion. In 2021, prior to his separation, his joint net worth was assessed at US$13.7 billion by Forbes and at US$11.2 billion by Bloomberg.

See also

• List of NRL club owners

External links