Atlassian has argued that it is reducing the number of people in its team as AI has reduced the need for them, and that the savings it generates will allow it to further the capabilities of its staff replacing AI.
Of the 1,600 being cut, 480 people, or roughly 30 per cent of them, are Australia-based.
“I believe this is the right decision for Atlassian. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Far from it,” wrote Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes.
“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.
“We fundamentally believe people and AI create the best outcomes. Our approach is not ‘AI replaces people.’ 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,” Cannon-Brookes wrote.
“This is primarily about adaptation. We are reshaping our skill mix and changing how we work to build for the future.”
Atlassian’s acknowledgement of the influence of AI on workforces is a changed stance from the previous round of job cuts.
In July 2025, Cannon-Brookes notified staff that jobs were being terminated through a pre-recorded video. It said that staff would need to wait 15 minutes to receive an email determining their future at the company.
Cyber Daily exclusively reported that Australian staff were included in the 150 axed.
“We have made this decision after implementing improvements to the customer experience across our platform and tools, resulting in a significant reduction in support needs,” the company said at the time
“While we’re proud of this momentum, it leaves us with more capacity than needed to deliver strong customer support. [The] changes impact 150 teammates across the US, Australia, India, Germany, Canada, and the UK.”
The company reiterated that its growth led to the company outgrowing the needs of its customer support team. However, Atlassian addressed media claims that the jobs would be replaced by AI, saying that while it has empowered its customer service offering with AI, the jobs are not going to be replaced by the technology.
“Customers are … able to self-service through the embedding of AI in our contact form, but it’s primarily because our customers need less help with the product. These roles are not being replaced by AI,” it said.
The latest job cuts come as Atlassian is facing major issues, being one of the firms hardest hit by the “SaaSpocalypse”, which saw the S&P 500 software and services index lose roughly AU$1.4 trillion after Anthropic launched updates to its Claude AI.
This placed less faith in traditional Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers, leading to the plummet in stocks.
Atlassian was one of the hardest hit in the drop, with its share price halving in value just in 2026, and dropping a total of 66 per cent in the last 12 months. From their all time high, Atlassian shares are down 80 per cent.
Despite this, Cannon-Brookes told investors that the growth of AI and its outcomes were good for the company.
“I’m convinced AI is great for Atlassian. Others think software is dead,” he told shareholders.
“There is significant value, I think, between our offerings and those offerings,” he added, in reference to tools like Cowork.
“So we don’t see that as being perhaps the challenge that others do out there.
“There’s a great partnership opportunity there, and we continue to explore that, we continue to use their offerings really strongly internally.”
While he said he was “frustrated” by the share price drop, he maintained that he was “incredibly bullish” about AI.
