Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-founder of Atlassian, Sydney, Australia, December 6, 2023.
Lisa Marie Williams Bloomberg | Getty Images
atlassian announced Wednesday that it will cut 10% of its workforce, or about 1,600 jobs, in a restructuring effort after its stock price plummeted due to the development of artificial intelligence.
“We are doing this to self-fund further investments in AI and enterprise sales while strengthening our financial profile,” CEO Mike Cannon-Brooks said in a blog post. He said employees will be notified of their status via email.
Atlassian has lost more than half its value this year as software stocks fell broadly on concerns about competitive threats from generative AI tools such as Anthropic’s Claude Cowork. The company’s stock is down 84% from its 2021 high. The company had been a big winner during the coronavirus era, as cloud-based collaboration tools skyrocketed in popularity among office workers working from home.
The company said in a filing that the cuts will cost between $225 million and $236 million and should be largely complete by the end of June.
The maker of Jira project tracking software has been working to grow demand for its Rovo AI capabilities, touting 5 million monthly users in February. Atlassian offers Rovo credits on subscription, and the company’s year-over-year revenue growth has accelerated over the past three quarters.
Atlassian will cut 500 jobs, or 5% of its workforce, in 2023.
In recent months, bosses have increasingly emphasized AI, even as they say they will cut staff. In February, Mr. Block Jack Dorsey has announced that the payments company will lay off 4,000 employees as it seeks to put “intelligence” at the core of its business. “This generation of AI is the most revolutionary technology we’ve seen since the Internet,” Beth Galetti, Amazon’s head of human resources, said in an October blog post announcing the 14,000 job cuts.
Cannon-Brooks said Wednesday that for Atlassian, AI will not replace employees.
“But it would be disingenuous to pretend that AI won’t change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles we need in a given field; it does,” he wrote. “This is primarily about adaptation. We are rebuilding our skill mix and changing the way we approach building for the future.”
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