Atlassian vs Automation Anywhere: Founders, CEOs and History

Company facts

Founders

CEOs and their tenures

Timeline: Atlassian and Automation Anywhere side by side

1. 2002Atlassian

   Company founded by Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar in Sydney

   Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar founded Atlassian with $10,000 in credit card debt while students at the University of New South Wales. They launched Jira, a bug-tracking and project management tool for software developers.

2. 2003Automation Anywhere

   Incorporation as Tethys Solutions in San Jose: Mihir Shukla, Neeti Mehta Shukla, Ankur Kothari and Rushabh Parmani incorporated Tethys Solutions, LLC in San Jose, California, selling software that rec…

3. 2004Atlassian

   Launch of Confluence team collaboration platform

   Atlassian launched Confluence, a team collaboration and documentation platform that complemented Jira and expanded the addressable market beyond software development into general team collaboration and knowledge management.

4. 2005Atlassian

   Reaches $1 million in annual revenue with no salespeople

   Atlassian reached $1 million in annual revenue entirely through self-service online sales, validating the product-led growth model and demonstrating that enterprise software could be sold without a traditional sales force.

5. 2010Atlassian

   Raises $60 million from Accel Partners

   Atlassian raised its first outside investment, $60 million from Accel Partners, after eight years of bootstrapped growth. The money went to product development and international expansion, not to building a sales force.

6. 2010Automation Anywhere

   Renamed Automation Anywhere, Inc.: The company rebranded from Tethys Solutions to Automation Anywhere, Inc.

7. 2012Atlassian

   Acquisition of HipChat for real-time messaging

   Atlassian acquired HipChat, an enterprise messaging platform, entering the real-time communication market and expanding the product suite beyond project management and documentation.

8. 2015Atlassian

   Initial public offering on NASDAQ

   Atlassian completed its IPO on the NASDAQ Global Select Market, raising $462 million at a valuation of $4.37 billion. Shares were priced at $21 and rose 32% on the first day to close near $28.

9. 2017Atlassian

   Acquisition of Trello for $425 million

   Atlassian acquired Trello, a visual task management platform built on Kanban boards, for $425 million in cash and stock. The deal extended its reach to non-technical teams and smaller organizations, complementing Jira.

10. 2017Automation Anywhere

    First Imagine customer conference: Automation Anywhere held its first Imagine customer and partner event in New York on May 24 and 25, 2017, and ran a second Imagine in Bengaluru in September of the s…

11. 2018Atlassian

    Launch of Jira Service Management

    Atlassian launched Jira Service Management, entering the IT service management market and extending Jira from software development into IT operations and service desk work.

12. 2018Automation Anywhere

    Bot Store opens as an RPA bot marketplace: Launched in London in March 2018, Bot Store offered prebuilt, plug and play bots from Automation Anywhere and partners including EY and Genpact, cutting the…

13. 2018Automation Anywhere

    $250M Series A at a $1.8B valuation: After fifteen years without institutional equity, the company raised $250 million on July 2, 2018 led by New Enterprise Associates and Goldman Sachs Growth Equity,…

14. 2018Automation Anywhere

    SoftBank Vision Fund adds $300M: In November 2018 the SoftBank Vision Fund invested $300 million as an extension of the Series A, taking the round to $550 million and the post-money valuation to $2.6…

15. 2019Automation Anywhere

    Acquisition of Klevops in Paris: Automation Anywhere acquired Klevops SAS of Paris in August 2019 to orchestrate work between employees and bots, the technology behind the attended automation interfac…

16. 2019Automation Anywhere

    Enterprise A2019 launches as a web-based platform: In October 2019 the company shipped Enterprise A2019, a cloud-native browser-based rewrite that it said added more than 175 features across 40 produc…

17. 2019Automation Anywhere

    $290M Series B at a $6.8B valuation: Salesforce Ventures led a $290 million Series B announced on November 21, 2019, with SoftBank Investment Advisers and Goldman Sachs participating, at a $6.8 billio…

18. 2020Atlassian

    Acquisition of Mindville for asset management

    Atlassian acquired Mindville, an IT asset management company, to add asset and configuration management to Jira Service Management for enterprise customers.

19. 2020Automation Anywhere

    Pandemic restructuring and workforce reduction: In April 2020 Automation Anywhere cut jobs and restructured parts of the company, saying the COVID-19 pandemic and the change it brought to the global e…

20. 2021Atlassian

    Acquisition of Chartio for data visualization

    Atlassian acquired Chartio, a cloud data visualization and analytics company, to improve reporting across the product suite. The standalone Chartio product was later discontinued.

21. 2021Automation Anywhere

    Enterprise A2019 rebranded Automation 360: In March 2021 the company introduced Automation 360 as the brand for its unified cloud-native platform and widened deployment across AWS, Microsoft Azure and…

22. 2021Automation Anywhere

    Acquisition of FortressIQ for process discovery: Announced in December 2021, the FortressIQ deal added computer vision process discovery that maps how work is done across applications and turns it int…

23. 2022Atlassian

    Acquisition of Percept.AI for AI virtual agents

    Atlassian acquired Percept.AI, an AI virtual agent company, to add automated ticket handling to Jira Service Management ahead of its broader AI push.

24. 2023Atlassian

    Acquisition of Loom for approximately $975 million

    Atlassian acquired Loom, an asynchronous video messaging platform, for about $975 million, its largest acquisition by announced value, adding recorded video to Jira and Confluence workflows.

25. 2023Automation Anywhere

    Start of an unbroken non-GAAP profitable run: The quarter ended October 31, 2023 began the run of non-GAAP profitable quarters with positive free cash flow that the company counted as ten by the quart…

26. 2024Atlassian

    Launch of Rovo AI assistant

    Atlassian launched Rovo, an AI assistant embedded across its products, providing search, summarization, automation, and agents that draw on the Teamwork Graph.

27. 2024Atlassian

    Server end-of-life forces cloud and data center migration

    Atlassian ended support for its Server product line in February 2024, requiring remaining on-premises customers to move to either Cloud or Data Center subscriptions.

28. 2024Automation Anywhere

    AI plus Automation Enterprise System and AI Agent Studio: At Imagine 2024 in Austin in June 2024 the company unveiled an AI plus Automation Enterprise System with AI Agent Studio, letting customers bu…

29. 2025Atlassian

    Launch of Atlassian Collections

    Atlassian began selling Collections, bundles of apps and AI agents priced around an outcome rather than per product: the Teamwork Collection, Software Collection, Service Collection, and Strategy Collection.

30. 2025Atlassian

    Announces end of life for Data Center products

    On September 8, 2025, Atlassian announced the end of life of its Data Center products under a migration program called Atlassian Ascend.

31. 2025Atlassian

    Acquisition of The Browser Company of New York

    Atlassian completed the acquisition of The Browser Company of New York, maker of the Dia and Arc browsers, on October 20, 2025, for a total purchase price of $488.3 million, taking the company into enterprise browsers.

32. 2025Atlassian

    Acquisition of engineering intelligence vendor DX

    Atlassian acquired A Software Company, which trades as DX, on November 10, 2025 for $720.4 million in cash. DX measures how engineering investment turns into delivered work and is being folded into Atlassian Collections.

33. 2025Automation Anywhere

    Acquisition of Aisera: On November 4, 2025 Automation Anywhere acquired Aisera and its team of more than 100 AI engineers, adding self-service AI agents for IT service management, HR and customer serv…

34. 2026Atlassian

    Restructuring eliminates roles covering about 10% of the workforce

    Atlassian initiated a second restructuring plan in the third quarter of fiscal 2026, eliminating roles covering approximately 10% of its workforce to fund investment in AI and enterprise sales.

35. 2026Atlassian

    Rovo reaches over 80% of the Fortune 500

    Atlassian reported that Rovo was in use at over 80% of Fortune 500 companies and that its MCP server and Teamwork Graph CLI passed one million monthly active users in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, more than doubling in a quarter.

36. 2026Automation Anywhere

    OpenAI collaboration and a tenth profitable quarter: Reporting the quarter ended January 31, 2026, Automation Anywhere recorded its tenth consecutive non-GAAP profitable quarter, said AI products were…

Acquisitions

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