What a $42B Software Co. Really Spends on AI Tools

What a $42B Software Co. Really Spends on AI Tools

From Gradient Dissent: Conversations on AI by Lukas Biewald

January 20, 2026 · 1h 8m · Season 1 · Episode 135

About this episode

Mike Cannon-Brookes discusses Atlassian's insights on AI tools and their impact on developer productivity.

“I don't worry about being replaced by AI. I worry about being replaced by someone who's really good at using AI.” Atlassian has 10,000+ engineers currently split-testing the world’s top AI coding tools, from GitHub Copilot and Cursor to Claude Code. In this episode, Co-Founder & CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes joins Lukas Biewald to share what their data reveals about the world's best AI tools today. Hear how 24 years of building a tech giant and a massive internal study on AI productivity have shaped Mike's vision for the future of dev jobs. Connect with us here: Mike Cannon-Brookes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcannonbrookes/?originalSubdomain=au Atlassian: https://www.linkedin.com/company/atlassian/?viewAsMember=true Lukas Biewald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lbiewald/ Weights & Biases: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wandb/ 00:00 Trailer 01:08 Introduction 03:11 Connecting Technology and Business Teams 07:22 The Impact of AI on Business Workflows 13:26 Developer Productivity and AI 21:03 Measuring Developer Efficiency 25:41 Future of AI in Development 34:59 Legacy Technology and Code Changes 39:29 AI's Role in Developer Productivity 47:40 AI and Junior Developers 52:30…

People in this episode

Host: Lukas Biewald

Guest: Mike Cannon-Brookes

Topics covered

  • AI tools
  • developer productivity
  • business workflows
  • software engineering
  • tech industry

Keywords

  • AI productivity
  • software development
  • engineering tools
  • tech giants
  • business strategy

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Atlassian, Weights & Biases

Products: GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code

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