Software company Altassian said on Wednesday that it would lay off around 10% of the workforce. The company said that majority of impacted employees are in North America, amounting to 40%, followed by 30% in Australia and 16% in India. It expects to incur about $225 million to $236 million in charges related to the layoffs and office space reductions.
A spokesperson said that more than 900 affected positions were involved in software research and development. Most of Atlassian’s employees work in software engineering and design, accounting for over 50% of its 13,813 full-time workforce in June 2025.
Altassian’s co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes, told employees the move was “the right decision for Atlassian” in a note circulated late Wednesday, local time. “But that doesn’t mean it’s easy,” he said. “Far from it. I know this has a huge impact on each of you, and it weighs heavily on me and Atlassian today.”
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Cannon-Brookes suggested in his statement that AI use had changed the skills and roles the company needed, allowing a restructure to strengthen the company’s financial standing and “self-fund further investment in AI and enterprise sales.”
When asked whether AI replaced the 1,600 employees who were laid off, Cannon-Brookes said “Our approach is not ‘AI replaces people’. But it would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn’t change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas.”
However, according to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald, the manner in which roles were selected prompted confusion and frustration internally. One employee, who asked not to be identified, said there was “zero visibility on who is specifically cut aside from searching individual people’s names.”
“A senior [colleague] in my team who had exceeded expectations in the last performance review… has been let go, whereas there are newly joined team members with less than three months tenure who have not been affected,” the employee said. “I personally think we overhired,” the employee said, “and [Cannon-Brookes is] hoping the stock price goes up as a result.”
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The restructure comes amid persistent financial underperformance that has troubled investors. Despite generating significant revenue and reporting 23% revenue growth in its most recent quarter, the company has not recorded a net profit in a decade and hands out large amounts of stock to employees each year. The company’s net loss increased from $38.2 million to 42.6 million in the most recent quarter.
Altassian also announced that its chief technology officer Rajeev Rajan, a former Meta executive, would step down after nearly four years. He will be replaced by two internal promotions: Taroon Mandhana as chief technology officer of teamwork, and Vikram Rao as chief technology officer of enterprise and chief trust officer. The company described both as “next-generation AI talent.”
These moves come amid widespread debates over layoffs, hiring and AI, as an increasing number of tech companies cut large sections of its workforce.