Decoder · Sep 28, 2026 · 1h 11m · 57m saved
With Mike Cannon-Brookes, Co-founder and CEO of Atlassian
More than 98% of the people who use Atlassian's MCP server, a connector that lets AI tools read and act on its data, still use its regular interface, Mike Cannon-Brookes said.
The "SaaSpocalypse" argument says AI agents will read a software company's data directly and make tools like Jira and Confluence unnecessary. Cannon-Brookes said the customers who connect AI tools to Atlassian's platform are the ones increasing their spending fastest.
"I say that headless is brainless."
Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-founder and CEO of Atlassian, on Decoder, runs the company whose Jira, Confluence, Trello and Loom many businesses use to organize their work. Atlassian bought The Browser Company, maker of the Dia browser, for $610M in 2025, and cut about 10% of its staff in March.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 71 minutes of audio, 14 minutes of reading.
Here are the 13 takeaways that matter.
Key Takeaways
Customers using Atlassian's AI connectors grow their spending faster, and more than 98% still use its interface
Selling only a data connection to AI agents is "submission in slow motion" for a software vendor, he said
He expects more knowledge workers and developers in 5 to 10 years, not fewer
Bank branches closed, then grew again over the last 10 years with a different job
AI can clear about 80% of a process step, but a person still has to judge the hard cases and track the volume
The March layoffs were about the mix of skills, because Atlassian can no longer change its mix just by hiring
Legal and customer service are input-bound jobs; engineering and marketing are not, so the second group should grow as a share of staff
Atlassian put internal IT and engineering under its chief people officer because its AI projects were part talent, part systems
A chatbot is not the final interface for work, and Dia is built around the tabs knowledge workers already use
1. A Company of Processes
The host asked what Atlassian is today. Cannon-Brookes said it is a platform that connects a company's business and technology teams, built for organizations where software is the main competitive advantage.
Businesses are systems of processes
He said the work itself is not done in Jira. Developers, marketers and finance staff do not live in it. Jira is a workflow engine that lets teams see what they and their colleagues are doing.
"If you think about a business as a system of processes that are put together, everything in a business is some sort of system." — Mike Cannon-Brookes
He said agents and AI will speed those processes up and make their output more reliable and consistent, and will put more weight on the parts that need human judgment.
