Mike Cannon-Brookes, Scott Farquhar reap $4bn as Atlassian beats expectations

The personal fortunes of two of the nation’s richest businessmen rocketed by a massive $4bn on paper Friday when investors responded to their tech company beating revenue expectations.

Atlassian founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar.

Atlassian co-founders Mike Cannon Brookes and Scott Farquhar have added around $4bn to their fortunes after strong revenue numbers caused shares in the company to surge 20 per cent in after-hours trading.

The global software giant on Thursday in the US (Friday Australian time) reported that revenue had soared to $US1.28bn ($2bn), up 21 per cent year on year in its second quarter.

Much of the momentum was due to the company’s new AI tool Rovo, and products such as Jira and planning product Trello which alone were responsible for $1.21bn in revenue – up 31 per cent year-on-year.

Mr Cannon-Brookes, Atlassian’s chief executive, told shareholders the company had now beaten its $US5bn annual revenue run-rate target.

“We scaled past $US5bn in annual run-rate revenue, powered by subscription revenue which grew 30 per cent year-over-year in Q2,” he said.

Net income grew to $US255.6 million in the second quarter of the 2025 financial year, up from $US189.5m over the same period in 2024.

The company was able to halve its net losses to $US38.2m compared with the same quarter in FY24 when it reported a net loss of $US84.5m.

In after-hours trading, the company’s shares soared to their highest level in about three years, reaching $US319 ($512).

The company reported a thriving cloud offering which grew 15 per cent year on year to 49,449 customers and cloud annual recurring revenue greater than $US10,000.

Its acquisition of video platform Loom in 2023 for $US975m had proved successful, with the platform recording 88 million videos which the company claims reduced around 200 million meetings.

Mr Cannon-Brookes said Atlassian’s investment in AI had now begun to pay off.

“By infusing AI throughout our world-class cloud platform, we’re empowering all teams to accelerate collaboration and unlock organisational knowledge, further enabling them to unleash their full potential,” he said.

That AI growth was in part boosted by a multi-year partnership with Amazon Web Services which boosted the company’s AI products for customers.

The company shared guidance for its third quarter in which revenue is expected to rise again to between $1.34bn to $1.35bn.

Atlassian expects major growth in several areas, such as cloud revenue, and projects 23.5 per cent year-on-year growth for the third quarter, and its data centre revenue to grow 7 per cent year on year.

For the full year, Atlassian shared guidance of revenue growth between 18 to 19 per cent, cloud revenue growth of about 26.5 per cent and data centre growth of 21.5 per cent year on year.

Atlassian chief financial officer Joe Binz said that the company’s data centre products were helping it gain momentum.

“Strong enterprise sales execution drove better-than-expected revenue across both our cloud and data centre offerings, as we delivered 30 per cent year-over-year growth in subscription revenue in the second quarter,” he said.

“The momentum we’re seeing across the business reinforces our conviction around investments we are making in our key strategic priorities of serving enterprise customers, AI, and the system of work to deliver durable, long-term growth.”

Originally published as Mike Cannon-Brookes, Scott Farquhar reap $4bn as Atlassian beats expectations