Atlassian billionaire spruiks AI as CEO fires 150 workers over video

Updated Wed, 30 July 2025, 2:10 am 6 min read

Australian tech company Atlassian has cut 150 staff members in a pre-recorded video message delivered by co-founder and CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes early this morning. Customer service and support roles will be impacted in the cuts, with some of their tasks now set to be done by artificial intelligence (AI).

The startling video message came hours before co-founder and billionaire Scott Farquhar heralded Australia's AI revolution in an Australian Press Club address. The former co-CEO said Australia needs to let go of "jobs from the past" and said those impacted by shifts can lean on the nations "very strong social safety net".

The duo founded the software company Atlassian in 2002 and have been labelled Australia's first tech billionaires.

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Cannon-Brookes sent the video to impacted staff on Wednesday morning, with the title ‘Restructuring the CSS Team: A Difficult Decision for Our Future’. Employees weren’t told about their jobs before the announcement and reportedly had to wait 15 minutes to find out their fate over email before their laptops were immediately blocked.

Atlassian declined to comment when approached by Yahoo Finance but confirmed it had made the “hard decision” to let a small cohort of customer service and support employees go.

It’s understood the decision was made following improvements to customer experience across the company’s platform and tools, which meant there was a significant reduction in support needs. It has disputed the claim that the jobs will be “replaced by AI”.

According to The Australian, Cannon-Brookes told affected staff the company’s customer service team had become a victim of the business’s broader success.

Larger clients had been moved off the older software platform and into the cloud, reducing the volume of complex support tasks required.

He noted future complaints would more likely be treated in part with AI.

It's understood impacted staff are being consulted and offered a minimum of 12 weeks' pay.

It comes as Commonwealth Bank revealed it would be axing 45 roles in its customer call centres, citing AI as the reason behind the cuts.

The bank introduced a new chatbot system to answer customer inquiries in June and said it had reduced the volume of calls by 2,000 a week.

The lay-offs came the same day as former co-CEO and co-founder Scott Farquhar spruiked the benefits of AI to the National Press Club.