Former ACCC chair Rod Sims had some thoughts about the karma bus today, within the wake of Atlassian’s cofounders seeing billions wiped from their fortunes by the relentless march of AI by means of software program corporations.
Maybe having fun with liberties of not operating Australia’s competitors regulator, Sims recalled fond reminiscences of clashing with CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes and his offsider, Scott Farquhar, who now chairs the Billionaires Tech Council of Australia, in regards to the course of tech coverage and its .
The leitmotif in his musings is probably finest summed up by Galatians 6:7 – “Be not deceived; God will not be mocked: for in any respect a person soweth, that shall he additionally reap“.
Atlassian shares, value US$313 in February 2025, now sit just below US$74. They’ve halved in worth because the begin of 2026 and each Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar have seen their private fortunes plummet by greater than $7 billion every.
Final week the CEO introduced 1600 jobs, around 10% of Atlassian’s workforce, including nearly 500 jobs in Australia, are going. He didn’t sheet it dwelling to AI, however it’s within the combine.
And now, pricey reader, earlier than we dive into the Sims op ed, titled “The AI lesson Atlassian’s Cannon-Brookes doesn’t want to hear”, this creator should take you again to when he was the ACCC boss and came up with the idea, under the former Coalition government, of the News Media Bargaining Code (NMBC).
The code was a scheme to make Google and Fb (because it was identified then, earlier than Zuckerberg went all Meta), pay media corporations for supposedly benefiting from the usage of media-generated information on their websites. It was backed up with laws and kicked off this time five years ago.
Fb threw its toys out of the cot and banned news. Then it demonstrated how precisely it targets audiences for advertisers by blocking posts from hospitals and well being departments, the Bureau of Meteorology, emergency companies, charities together with the Kids’s Most cancers Institute and ASX-listed corporations, earlier than ultimately coming to the desk.
Regulating tech
However on the time, within the struggle between the regulator and large tech, lots of tech titans weighed in to smack Sims. Cannon-Brookes was operating an organization value round 250% greater than it’s now. He was on Zuckerberg’s facet, calling the NMBC “legalised theft” and a “shakedown”.
As an apart – these whose work has been taken with out permission to coach AI, should discover it quaint that if it was theft, not less than it legalised.
In the meantime, final August, after stepping down as Atlassian’s co-CEO, Farquhar went on nation TV, when Atlassian’s share value was greater than double what it’s value now, to advocate for AI. He declared that he wouldn’t mind if his company’s intellectual property was taken without the user paying for it if it led to higher software program, placing the case for AI as “most likely truthful use”.
The irony was not misplaced on Sims, who started: “the co-founders of Atlassian, each long-time advocates, it appears, of full tech freedom from regulation, are actually confronted with AI critically threatening their enterprise.”
One of many existential threats to Atlassian proper now could be that individuals corporations used to rent, paying the software program enterprise for Jira subscriptions, are actually being changed by AI. The disruptors are actually being disrupted.
Sims returned to his outdated stomping floor, musing on coverage for AI and large tech to ponder “whether or not we’re seeing real ‘artistic destruction’, and so productiveness features, or an train primarily in financial hire extraction” on this new period, arguing that there must be “some primary guidelines of the highway to make sure AI boosts productiveness moderately than creates extra alternatives for hire extraction” in distinction to the “basic strategy to AI and large tech” of the Atlassian cofounders.
Throttled features
Central to his thesis is that “in so many elements of our financial system, large tech has inserted itself between suppliers and shoppers and extracted income to the price of shoppers, product suppliers and the financial system. When a small variety of giant corporations management areas of the digital ecosystem, the potential financial features are throttled.”
Sims additionally threw a left-right jab combo at Cannon-Brookes for arguing that the NMBC misunderstands how the web works.
“Attempt telling this to corporations utilizing Google advert tech, or banks which can not compete with Apple Pay as a result of they can not achieve entry to the NFC antenna in iPhones. Nothing appears free in relation to the web,” he mentioned, including that “from an financial perspective the digital financial system has introduced each artistic destruction and hire extraction”.
Sims appeared to heat to the Galatians vibe when he mentioned: “Ought to we be involved? Quite the opposite, we must always applaud what appears on its face to be clear “artistic destruction” because the outdated means of doing issues is changed by the brand new. Productiveness development is the result”.
For now the jury remains to be out on the productiveness features from AI. However if you happen to’re to imagine what CEOs are saying proper now, it’s going to save lots of them a fortune on their wages invoice.
You’ll be able to learn the full Sims serve here.
