‘It’s out of our hands anyway’: Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes says there probably isn’t a need to pause AI development despite widespread warnings

• October 10, 2026

Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes has said he believes there is no immediate need to slow down development of AI, despite several recent high-profile incidents leading to growing calls for such action.

Speaking to media at the recent Atlassian Team Europe 2026 event, Cannon-Brookes indicated that the company isn’t planning any changes to its development lifecycle going forward.

“We tend to take a very textured approach to all that sort of thing,” he noted. “Will we slow down? No, we won’t. There’s no logical world where I think that happens.”

AI rewards

Cannon-Brookes went on to note that if nations are competing to stay ahead when it comes to the latest advances in the AI space, this will necessarily mean that development will continue at a pace.

“I think we’re pretty good at broadly adapting to all these sorts of things,” he said, looking to emphasize the rewards of AI, such as improved efficiency and productivity.

“Should we slow down? Should we pace the frontier? Should we not? It’s out of our hands anyway. There’s nothing that we can do.”

“I think the reality of the global geopolitical world is not going to change. So we work out what we do about that world rather than wishing it was different. I don’t know. Maybe I’m too pragmatic about it, but it’s not in my control.”

Looking forward, Cannon-Brookes was eager to promote Atlassian’s position as one of the five biggest software vendors in the world, counting a huge amount of Fortune 500 firms as customers.

“We are critical to how so many businesses operate, not just how they collaborate, but how they operate, and increasingly so as we get baked into more and more critical workflows in the business,” he noted.

But he also admitted there were challenges to overcome when it comes to trust, especially with the potential issues AI can pose.

“There’s a lot of challenge out there in the trust world,” Cannon-Brookes said, looking to highlight the fact that agents are baked-in to Atlassian tools as a key differentiator – allowing for trust to build as the company can show exactly what it is up to – and that they can be trusted in the future.

“Customers are not subscribing for the software we’ve built, but for the software we will build,” he added.

Overall though, the message from both Cannon-Brookes and Atlassian as a whole was one of collaboration, and a new “multiplayer” capacity for AI agents.

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Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes has said he believes there is no immediate need to slow down development of AI, despite several recent high-profile incidents leading to growing calls for such action. Speaking to media at the recent Atlassian Team Europe 2026 event, Cannon-Brookes indicated that the company isn’t planning any…