Michael Cannon-Brookes (born November 1979) is an Australian billionaire business magnate who is the co-founder and co-CEO of software company Atlassian.

Since 2018, he has been involved in the Australia-Asia Power Link, a huge electricity infrastructure project to be developed in the Northern Territory by Sun Cable in a collaboration with Twiggy Forrest.

Cannon-Brookes was born in November 1979,^[3] the son of a global banking executive, also named Mike, and his wife, Helen.^[4]

He attended Cranbrook School in Sydney,^[5] and graduated from the University of New South Wales with a degree in information systems on a UNSW Co-op Scholarship.^[6]

With Scott Farquhar, Cannon-Brookes is the co-founder and co-CEO of Atlassian, a collaboration software company. The pair started the company in 2002, shortly after graduating from university, funding it with credit cards.^[7] 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.^[8][9]

Their first major Atlassian product was Jira, an issue- and project-tracking software.^[10] 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.^[10] As of 2016, the company still did not have a traditional sales force, investing instead in research and development.^[11]

In 2005, they opened an office in New York, where most of their clients were.^[10] Later in 2005 they moved the U.S. office to San Francisco,^[12] which had a much larger pool of relevant technical talent.^[10]

Their first external funding for Atlassian was a $US60 million round from Accel in 2010.^[13]

In 2014, they redomiciled the company to the UK, in advance of an IPO.^[14]

On 10 December 2015, Atlassian made its initial public offering (IPO) on the NASDAQ stock exchange,^[15] putting the market capitalization of Atlassian at $4.37 billion.^[16] The IPO made Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar Australia's first tech startup billionaires and household names in Australia.^[17][18][19]

In 2022, Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar redomiciled Atlassian to the United States.^[14]

In March 2022, 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.^[20][21] 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.^[22][21]

Cannon-Brookes is an adjunct professor at the University of New South Wales' School of Computer Science and Engineering.

In December 2020, Cannon-Brookes bought a minority stake in NBA team Utah Jazz, along with Qualtrics co-founder Ryan Smith.^[7]

Cannon-Brookes is a major investor in Australian publicly listed energy company AGL.^[23]

In September 2020, it was revealed that Cannon-Brookes was listed on a Chinese Government "Overseas Key Individuals Database" of prominent international individuals of interest for China.^[24]

Cannon-Brookes married American fashion designer Annie Todd in 2010, and they had four children together.^[25][26]

The couple first met at a Qantas lounge while flying from Sydney to San Francisco.^[27] Cannon-Brookes and Todd lived in Sydney's eastern suburbs in Centennial Park.^[9] 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.^[28] 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.^[29] His Centennial Park home sold for A$16.5 million.^[30] In 2019 he purchased a house near Fairwater for A$12 million.^[31]

Cannon-Brookes separated from his wife Annie in July 2023.^[25]

Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar were recognised as Ernst & Young's 2006 Australian Entrepreneur of the Year.^[32] Cannon-Brookes 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;^[33] by BRW Rich 200 as A$2.00 billion;^[34] and by the Sunday Times Rich List as £906 million.^[35] As of May 2023^[update], the Australian Financial Review estimated his net worth was A$19.01 billion.^[36] Meanwhile, in 2021, his net worth was assessed at US$13.7 billion by Forbes and at US$11.2 billion by Bloomberg.^[2]

More information Year, BRW Rich 200 ...

Year	BRW Rich 200		Forbes Australia's 50 Richest		Sunday Times Rich List
	Rank	Net worth (A$)	Rank	Net worth (US$)	Rank	Net worth (£)
2013[37][38]	190	$0.25 billion	n/a	not listed
2014[39][40]	35	$1.07 billion	n/a	not listed
2015[41][42]	42	$1.14 billion	25	$1.10 billion
2016[34][33][35]	18	$2.00 billion	14	$1.69 billion		£906 million
2017[43][44]	17	$2.51 billion	10	$3.40 billion
2018[45]	12	$5.16 billion	5
2019[46][47][48]	6	$9.63 billion	5	$6.40 billion
2020[49]	5	$16.93 billion
2021[1][2]	3	$20.18 billion		$13.70 billion
2022	3	$27.80 billion
2023[36]	6	$19.01 billion

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