Atlassian swears it can handle AI without blowing out costs, or being swamped

Atlassian has assured investors it can add AI to its services without blowing out its costs or shrinking margins.

CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes used the company’s Thursday earnings call to reveal Atlassian now has five million users of its Rovo agentic AI offering and suggested that investors in the company might worry that costs would blow out as a result.

“We're able to deliver those five million Rovo seats and continue to improve gross margin,” he reassured. “That's a huge achievement on behalf of our engineering teams, but it shows that we can manage those AI costs inside for the vast majority of customers.”

Atlassian runs entirely in public clouds, and Cannon-Brookes’ remarks suggest optimizing its operations, rather than high prices, is the reason it’s kept margins stable. Which isn’t great news for cloud operators, as it suggests at least one SaaS giant has found a ...