Cannon-Brookes ready to repeat AGL-style raids on other polluters

Mr Cannon-Brookes has often insisted his campaigning is his nights-and-weekend job. “I’m not saying I’m going to go off and become a full-time corporate activist,” he said in the interview.

Post-pandemic hangover

The entrepreneur has amassed a fortune estimated at north of $US17 billion ($25 billion) largely on the back of his 22 per cent slice of Atlassian, a developer of collaboration software. Mr Cannon-Brookes said he used a credit card to borrow $US10,000 to launch the company in 2002, building a business with a current market value of about $US58 billion in a country more traditionally known for birthing energy and mining juggernauts.

Since late last year, however, Atlassian has run afoul of a global sell-off in richly valued tech stocks as a post-pandemic hangover and mounting macroeconomic uncertainty forced a flight to safety.

AGL, a 185-year-old utility that is one of Australia’s biggest polluters, was in May forced to abandon a strategy that would have kept coal-fired power plants running for about two more decades after Mr Cannon-Brookes became the firm’s top shareholder and demanded changes. It is among the most successful recent examples of investor-led activism and follows the move last year by fund Engine No. 1 to have three climate-conscious directors voted onto the board of ExxonMobil.

A plan to “refresh and reinvigorate” AGL was in place, including changes to its board, management and efforts to accelerate decarbonisation, Mr Cannon-Brookes said, without elaborating. His Grok Ventures family office, now the firm’s top shareholder, has not finalised who will take up a board seat.

Atlassian, which has hit a goal to run its operations on 100 per cent renewable electricity, has set science-based targets to cut its carbon pollution, including scope 3 emissions. The company was also working with suppliers including Amazon Web Services to align them with its target of hitting net zero by 2040, Mr Cannon-Brookes said.

Grok Ventures, which has backed firms including solar technology developer SunDrive Solar, was continuing to study more investments in energy, agriculture and transportation, he said. Mr Cannon-Brookes also sees potential in grid infrastructure needed to transport energy over long distances. “I’m very bullish on high-voltage DC cables,” he said.

The $30 billion Sun Cable project, backed by Mr Cannon-Brookes and iron ore billionaire Andrew Forrest, aims to export solar power from Australia’s Outback to Singapore via a 4200-kilometre high-voltage undersea cable.

Before the end of the decade, the tech developer and wife Annie Cannon-Brookes aim to spend an additional $US1.5 billion of their personal wealth on efforts to speed up climate action.

The couple will devote “at least $US500 million in philanthropy and at least another billion dollars toward investments in sustainability,” he said. “My money is out the door in eight years. I’m not building a big foundation and having money sit there.”

Bloomberg