Atlassian, the Sydney-based software giant behind Jira and Confluence, is going all in on developer productivity. Today, the company announced its biggest acquisition to date: the purchase of DX, a platform to measure and improve engineering team efficiency, for $1 billion in cash and stock.
It’s a trend in the tech world—companies are looking for concrete ways to understand what slows down engineering teams, especially as AI changes workflows. For Atlassian, bringing DX into the product family is not just adding another tool, but deepening its role in the daily lives of developers.
Why Atlassian chose DX
Atlassian co-founder and co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said the company had spent years trying to build its own developer productivity insights tool in-house. Eventually, the team realized an external partner might have already cracked the code. DX stood out because 90% of its customers were already Atlassian users.
Cannon-Brookes praised DX for striking a balance—capturing both qualitative and quantitative measures of productivity without the surveillance-style tracking. According to him, DX doesn’t just generate numbers; it provides actionable insights and industry benchmarks that help teams see what’s really slowing them down.
The timing was another factor. With AI budgets exploding, companies are wondering if they’re spending wisely. Tools like DX could give execs a clearer picture of whether those investments are paying off.
The story of DX
DX is an underdog success story. Founded in 2020 by Abi Noda and Greyson Junggren, the company emerged from stealth just three years ago. Since then, it has tripled its customer base annually and now serves over 350 enterprise customers—including ADP, Adyen, and GitHub.
What’s amazing is how far DX got with so little outside funding. The company raised less than $5 million in venture capital and relied on lean growth strategies and product-market fit. Noda said his inspiration came from his time as a product manager at GitHub, where he found existing productivity metrics unhelpful and often misleading. He wanted to build something developers would love rather than resist.
Cultural fit and plans
Beyond tech, both companies see cultural alignment as important. Cannon-Brookes loves Utah-based founders—DX is based in Salt Lake City—and that both Atlassian and DX scaled without outside investors.
For Noda, the acquisition is the final piece of the “end-to-end flywheel” for customers. DX can see where teams are struggling, and Atlassian’s tools can fix those bottlenecks. The integration will give customers a more seamless experience for identifying and solving productivity problems.
A bigger acquisition strategy
This is Atlassian’s second big deal this month. Earlier in September, they acquired The Browser Company, a startup that makes an AI-powered web browser. Together, these two deals suggest a strategy to stay ahead of the work trends—whether that’s making sense of AI investments or improving day-to-day collaboration for developers.
By bringing DX into the fold, Atlassian is saying: productivity is no longer just about task lists and deadlines, but about actually understanding how work gets done. For enterprises navigating the fast-changing world of software development, this means more data-driven solutions. And for Atlassian, it’s another step in shaping the future of how teams build, ship, and scale software.
