Billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes goes all-in on climate investments

Mike Cannon-Brookes will dedicate his private company solely to climate-focused investments, positioning him to play an even more prominent role in the global energy transition.

Billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes’ private investment company will now be dedicated to climate financing and it will accept third party capital, changes the Atlassian co-founder said is needed to drive a bigger impact in addressing climate change.

The changes, which also sees Grok Ventures name a new chief executive, will see Mr Cannon-Brookes’ private investment company become a much larger investor in climate-focused ventures and position the tech billionaire as one Australia’s most prominent climate investors.

Mr Cannon-Brookes said the focus on global funding gaps in climate technology is Grok’s “sweet spot” and it is where investments can have the biggest impact.

“We have huge goals, so Grok will be committing more capital to grow our portfolio and over time we’ll be looking to partner with others to scale our climate investment opportunities,” said Mr Cannon-Brookes.

The climate focus announcement marks a recent tweak in Mr Cannon-Brookes’ focus. He has slowly reduced his equity stake in Atlassian in recent years and had invested in notable companies such as Zoom, Apple and Amazon.

But Mr Cannon-Brookes had signalled his intention to narrow his focus on climate-focused entities when he sold his near 12 per cent stake in Tyro Payments last year.

Grok already has investments across different climate-focused industries — in software with gridmo, Neara, WeaveGrid; renewable energy generation; sustainable fuels, waste management (Goterra), finance and project developers. Grok remains the largest shareholder in AGL Energy.

The change in Grok’s focus comes as Mr Cannon-Brookes moves to accelerate major developments such as Sun Cable, Australia’s biggest and most ambitious renewable energy project, which he acquired alongside Quinbrook.

Both Grok and Quinbrook are developing Australia’s largest solar farm in the NT, but Mr Cannon-Brookes is also continuing with plans to export the renewable energy to Singapore via a 4,200KM undersea cable.

The Sun Cable project is estimated to cost around $30bn — underscoring why Grok has elected to seek outside capital.

The Australian understands capital will be injected both in the fund holistically and on a project-by-project basis.

Grok’s climate focus was unveiled as the investment company also announced a new chief executive. Mr Cannon-Brookes said Tan Kueh will be the company’s new head, with Jeremy Kwong-Law now the chief investment officer.

“Having Tan and Jeremy at the helm means having a dream team behind Grok’s investment portfolio,” said Mr Cannon-Brookes.

Ms Kueh joins Grok after holding senior roles at Macquarie, UBS and BlackRock.

Mr Kwong-Law said by focusing on the CIO role he will have more bandwidth to do what he loves most, identifying the greatest opportunities in the climate space and working with founders and partners to scale them quickly.

“Seeding and scaling climate tech into climate infrastructure is going to require trillions of dollars in private capital. However, larger investors won’t fund these companies until the tech is proven at scale. This is the gap we are trying to fill, by investing early, de-risking the investments and working with founders to establish milestones that unlock additional forms of financing,” said Mr Kwong-Law.