Atlassian vs GitHub: Founders, CEOs and History
Atlassian was founded in 2002 by Mike Cannon-Brookes, Scott Farquhar and is led by Mike Cannon-Brookes. GitHub was founded in 2008 by Chris Wanstrath, Tom Preston-Werner, P. J. Hyett and is led by Jay Parikh.
Company facts
Founders
Atlassian
Mike Cannon-Brookes
Atlassian was founded in 2002 in Sydney, Australia, by Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar. The founding of the company is a notable departure from the traditional Silicon Valley startup narrative.
Scott Farquhar
Scott Farquhar co-founded Atlassian in 2002 and served as co-CEO alongside Mike Cannon-Brookes until he stepped down on August 31, 2024, one of the longest co-CEO partnerships among listed technology companies.
GitHub
Chris Wanstrath
Chris Wanstrath is a co-founder and former Chief Executive Officer of GitHub, Inc. In 2008, alongside P. J. Hyett, Tom Preston-Werner, and Scott Chacon, Wanstrath co-founded GitHub to solve the friction of open-source collaboration.
Tom Preston-Werner
Tom Preston-Werner is a co-founder and former Chief Executive Officer of GitHub. A software engineer and open-source creator, Preston-Werner was instrumental in formulating GitHub's product architecture, semantic versioning specifications (SemVer), and TOML co…
P. J. Hyett
P. J. Hyett is a co-founder and former Chief Operating Officer of GitHub, Inc. Partnering with Chris Wanstrath in late 2007, Hyett wrote the initial lines of GitHub's web application and managed the platform's early operational scaling.
Scott Chacon
Scott Chacon is an incredibly prominent American software developer, entrepreneur, and the critical fourth co-founder of the massive global code repository GitHub.
CEOs and their tenures
Atlassian
- Mike Cannon-Brookes2002–present
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Cannon-Brookes has led Atlassian since founding it in 2002, taking it from a $10,000 startup to $6.57 billion of fiscal 2026 revenue, and has been sole chief executive since Scott Farquhar stepped down on August 31, 2024.
Source - Scott Farquhar2002–2024
Co-Founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer
Farquhar served as co-CEO alongside Cannon-Brookes from 2002 until August 31, 2024, overseeing technical and engineering areas of the company as it grew from the original Jira issue tracker to a cloud platform serving more than 350,000 customers.
Source
GitHub
- Chris Wanstrath2008–2017
Co-Founder & Former Chief Executive Officer
Founding CEO who built GitHub from a weekend project into the home of global open-source software; returned as CEO from 2014 to 2017, guiding the company through its $7.5B acquisition by Microsoft.
Source - Tom Preston-Werner2012–2014
Co-Founder & Former Chief Executive Officer
Co-founder and CEO who negotiated the $100M Series A from a16z, created Jekyll and SemVer, and formulated GitHub's early enterprise sales expansion.
Source - Nat Friedman2018–2021
Chief Executive Officer (Post-Acquisition Integration)
Former Xamarin founder who led GitHub following the Microsoft acquisition; preserved GitHub's developer independence, launched GitHub Actions, Codespaces, and GitHub Sponsors, and doubled user scale to 73M developers.
Source - Thomas Dohmke2021–2025
Chief Executive Officer
CEO from November 2021; led the commercial rollout of Copilot and growth to a $2B revenue run rate. Announced his departure in August 2025 to found a startup (Entire).
Source - Jay Parikh2025–present
Executive Vice President, Microsoft CoreAI (GitHub's reporting line)
Former Meta engineering chief recruited by Satya Nadella to lead CoreAI; GitHub's leadership has reported into his organization since Dohmke's 2025 departure.
Source
Timeline: Atlassian and GitHub side by side
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.
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.
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.
2007GitHub
Founding Concept at The Cinch Saloon
Chris Wanstrath and P. J. Hyett conceived the idea for Git-based social code hosting at a San Francisco bar, teaming up with Tom Preston-Werner and Scott Chacon.
2008GitHub
Official Public Launch of GitHub
GitHub launched officially on April 10, 2008, introducing the 'Fork' button and 'Pull Request' to open-source software collaboration.
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.
2011GitHub
Launch of GitHub Enterprise & Overtaking SourceForge
Introduced GitHub Enterprise for on-premises corporate infrastructure and surpassed SourceForge as the world's most popular code host.
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.
2012GitHub
$100M Series A from Andreessen Horowitz
Closed a landmark $100M Series A investment led by Peter Levine at Andreessen Horowitz at a $750M valuation.
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.
2015GitHub
$250M Series B Led by Sequoia Capital
Raised $250M Series B at a $2.0B valuation, expanding international engineering offices and enterprise sales.
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.
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.
2018GitHub
Microsoft Acquires GitHub for $7.5 Billion
Microsoft acquired GitHub for $7.5B in stock; Nat Friedman was appointed CEO to operate GitHub as an independent subsidiary.
2019GitHub
Launch of GitHub Actions & Acquisition of Semmle
Released GitHub Actions for native CI/CD automation and acquired Semmle to build GitHub Advanced Security.
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.
2020GitHub
Acquisition of npm, Inc. (JavaScript Registry)
Acquired npm, integrating the world's largest JavaScript package registry directly into GitHub's ecosystem.
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.
2021GitHub
Launch of GitHub Copilot & Thomas Dohmke Appointed CEO
Unveiled GitHub Copilot with OpenAI, sparking the AI developer revolution; Thomas Dohmke was appointed CEO.
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.
2022GitHub
Surpasses $1.0B ARR & 100 Million Developers
Satya Nadella announced that GitHub crossed $1.0B in annualized recurring revenue and 100M registered developers.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
2026GitHub
Surpasses $2.0B ARR Powered by Copilot Enterprise
Achieved annualized recurring revenue exceeding $2.0B ARR, with Copilot adopted across 50,000+ corporate organizations worldwide.
Acquisitions
Atlassian
- The Browser Company of New York Inc.2025$488.3M
- A Software Company (DX)2025$720.4M
- Loom, Inc.2023$975M
- Percept.AI2022Undisclosed
- Chartio2021Undisclosed
- Mindville2020Undisclosed
GitHub
- npm, Inc.2020Undisclosed
- Semmle2019Undisclosed
- Dependabot2019Undisclosed
- Pull Panda2019Undisclosed
- Spectrum2018Undisclosed
Questions about Atlassian vs GitHub
Who is the CEO of Atlassian Corporation and GitHub, Inc.?
Atlassian Corporation is currently led by Mike Cannon-Brookes. The current CEO or equivalent executive for GitHub, Inc. was not available in our dataset.
When was Atlassian Corporation founded vs GitHub, Inc.?
Atlassian Corporation was founded in 2002 — 6 years before GitHub, Inc., which was founded in 2008. Atlassian Corporation's longer operating history gives it a deeper track record but also potentially more institutional inertia compared to the younger GitHub, Inc..
How many employees does Atlassian Corporation have compared to GitHub, Inc.?
Atlassian Corporation employs approximately 13,301 people, while GitHub, Inc. employs approximately 3,000. Atlassian Corporation has the larger workforce at 13,301 employees, compared to GitHub, Inc.'s 3,000. A higher headcount does not necessarily imply greater efficiency — it often reflects differences in business model (e.g., manufacturing vs. software).
Where are Atlassian Corporation and GitHub, Inc. headquartered?
Both Atlassian Corporation and GitHub, Inc. are headquartered in United States, meaning they operate under the same primary regulatory and tax environment.
Who founded Atlassian Corporation and GitHub, Inc.?
Atlassian Corporation was founded by Mike Cannon-Brookes, Scott Farquhar. GitHub, Inc. was founded by Chris Wanstrath, Tom Preston-Werner, P. J. Hyett, Scott Chacon.
Which company has a longer operating history — Atlassian Corporation or GitHub, Inc.?
Atlassian Corporation has been operating for approximately 24 years, making it the more established of the two companies. GitHub, Inc. has been in operation for around 18 years. A longer operating history often signals greater institutional resilience and brand recognition, though it can also mean slower adaptation to new market conditions.
Figures come from each company's filings and the sources linked beside them. Amounts reported in another currency are shown in US dollars at an approximate rate and marked with ~. Back to the Atlassian vs GitHub overview