Atlassian drops $1B on company that helps measure dev productivity

Aussie CEO promises AI everywhere, and clearer views of what your devs are up to

Atlassian has continued its AI spending spree with a $1 billion takeover of developer analysis biz DX, a move it promised would give devs "less friction and more flow."

Utah-based DX has made a specialty of monitoring developers' work to iron out kinks in the coding workflow and has over 300 customers, many of them overlapping with Atlassian's client base. According to Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes, the merger will give dev managers more insight into how coders can be made more productive, especially as AI coding tools come onto the scene.

In the last five years, DX has proven adept at tracking how developers are managing workflow and has made AI a particular focus. The company posits that while AI subscriptions help coders, they can also cost a colossal amount when added up on the balance sheet, and managers need to rein in these expenditures.

"I hear enterprise customers ask all the time, how do I know if my engineering teams are productive? Where should I be putting my AI dollars? And how do we measure the ROI of our AI investments?" said Cannon-Brookes in a canned statement.

"Being able to answer these questions is going to be massive. It'll make organizations more competitive, give them more clarity for decision making, and help them run faster. And this is where DX comes in."

DX cofounder Abi Noda said that around 95 percent of its customers use at least one Atlassian app, but that the business was still looking for new customers and the deal would increase the amount of capital that could be invested in R&D and speed up software development. We've asked if the buyout will change licensing terms and will update when new information comes in.

"By pairing DX’s intelligence solution with Atlassian’s AI-powered SDLC tools, customers unlock a powerful flywheel for transformation: using DX data to pinpoint bottlenecks, and then addressing them with Atlassian’s tools and solutions in a targeted, data-driven way," he said in a canned statement.

Atlassian expects the DX deal to close in the second fiscal quarter of 2026, with payment in cash and restricted stock, including the takeover target's cash balance. The deal comes despite Atlassian's struggle to turn consistent GAAP profits. The Australia-based dev tools giant reported [PDF] a $23.9 million net loss for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, improved from a $196.9 million loss in the same quarter a year earlier. Nonetheless, it's using its cash on hand to buy into the AI monitoring market in a big way.

Earlier this month, Atlassian spent $610 million in cash for The Browser Company, a development biz that is integrating AI into every stage of its Chromium-based browsers. Now that regulators aren’t forcing Google to sell off Chrome, Atlassian has apparently decided on competition and is willing to spend big bucks to do so quickly.

But as the AI bubble threatens to deflate, many AI-focused startups are looking for a buyout option, and it seems Atlassian is willing to scoop up players in the field despite its own history of losing money. ®