Atlassian chief executive Mike Cannon-Brookes has failed to convince investors of his plan to lure customers to its cloud platform by making its artificial intelligence assistant free, with an adverse reaction to the company’s quarterly earnings guidance shaving billions of dollars off his wealth.

A disappointing sales outlook, delivered on Thursday evening (Friday AEST), precipitated a dramatic sell-off that sent the Australian-headquartered, Nasdaq-listed software giant down almost 17 per cent, wiping $15 billion from its market capitalisation.