For Atlassian, AI is both a major opportunity and a huge risk
Experts predict AI could soon generate up to 80% of the world’s code. What does that mean for Atlassian, a company built on tools for developers?
Alongside strong revenue growth and encouraging cloud sales, Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes spent much of the company’s Friday earnings call spruiking its new artificial intelligence agent, Rovo.
Rovo is Atlassian’s first major product built from the ground up for the AI era and is the centrepiece of its broader Atlassian Intelligence suite. But while AI represents a major opportunity for the tech company, not everyone is convinced it doesn’t also pose a threat.
“There’s a big question about what’s the next chapter for this company,” Jeffries analyst Brent Thill said to Capital Brief. “Everybody’s seen all the studies on AI that say software is going to be writing itself, so how many collaborators on software do you need? If the software writes itself, what’s the role of Atlassian? I think they have still yet to prove that.”
Such a scenario, while not certain, is not out of the question. On Thursday, Microsoft-owned Github unveiled new tools to accelerate AI-powered code writing — a year after its CEO predicted that AI would soon be writing 80% of the world’s code. Alphabet noted on its earnings call that 25% of its own code was now generated by AI.
