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]

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.^[8] 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.^[9][10]

Their first major Atlassian product was Jira, an issue- and project-tracking software.^[11] 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.^[11] As of 2016, the company still did not have a traditional sales force, investing instead in research and development.^[12]

In 2005, they opened an office in New York, where most of their clients were.^[11] Later in 2005 they moved the U.S. office to San Francisco,^[13] which had a much larger pool of relevant technical talent.^[11]

Their first external funding for Atlassian was a US$60 million round from Accel in 2010.^[14] In 2014, they redomiciled the company to the UK, in advance of an initial public offering (IPO).^[15]

Atlassian made its debut on the Nasdaq stock exchange in December 2015,^[16] with a market capitalisation of $4.37 billion.^[17] The IPO made Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar Australia's first tech startup billionaires and household names in Australia.^[18][19][20]

Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar redomiciled Atlassian to the United States in 2022.^[15] In March that year, 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.^[21][22] In January 2023, Sun Cable went into administration owing to disagreements between Cannon-Brookes and Forrest, and in May 2023, Cannon-Brookes' company Grok Ventures outbid Forrest and others to buy the liquidated company.^[23][22]

Cannon-Brookes is an adjunct professor at the University of New South Wales' School of Computer Science and Engineering.^[24] He is a co-owner in the Utah Jazz and owns a stake in the South Sydney Rabbitohs, the latter who he grew up being a fan of.^[5] Cannon-Brookes is a major investor in Australian publicly listed energy company AGL,^[25] having planned to take it over in 2022.^[5] When that failed, he became the largest shareholder to stop a demerger from spinning out coal power plants.^[5] In September 2020, it was revealed that Cannon-Brookes was among 35,000 Australians listed on a Chinese Government "Overseas Key Individuals Database" of prominent international individuals of interest for China.^[26][27]

Cannon-Brookes married American fashion designer Annie Todd in 2010, and they have four children together.^[28][29] The couple first met at a Qantas lounge while flying from Sydney to San Francisco.^[30] Cannon-Brookes and Todd lived in Sydney's eastern suburbs in Centennial Park.^[10] 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.^[31] 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.^[32] His Centennial Park home sold for A$16.5 million.^[33] In 2019 he purchased a house near Fairwater for A$12 million.^[34] Cannon-Brookes separated from his wife Annie in July 2023.^[28]

Recognition edit

Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar were recognised as Ernst & Young's 2006 Australian Entrepreneur of the Year.^[35] He is a member of The Forum of Young Global Leaders.^[6]

In 2016, his net worth was estimated by Forbes on the list of Australia's 50 Richest people as US$1.69 billion;^[36] by BRW Rich 200 as A$2.00 billion;^[37] and by the Sunday Times Rich List as £906 million.^[38] As of May 2023^[update], the Australian Financial Review estimated his net worth was A$19.01 billion.^[39] Meanwhile, in 2021, his net worth was assessed at US$13.7 billion by Forbes and at US$11.2 billion by Bloomberg.^[40]

• List of NRL club owners

• Mike Cannon-Brookes on Twitter