Australian tech giant Atlassian has acquired US developer productivity platform DX for $1.5 billion as it continues to go all-in on AI.

The $US1 billion buyout, in the form of cash and stock, is Atlassian’s largest acquisition to date, and comes just weeks after it announced it had bought AI web browser The Browser Company for nearly $1 billion.

It’s part of the tech giant’s efforts to become an all-in-one solution for enterprises merging AI and software development.

DX, which was founded five years ago in Salt Lake City, provides an analytics tool that allows clients to track the performance of their engineering teams.

With Atlassian’s purchase, it is looking to help its users quantify the return they are getting on using AI in their software development process, and whether it is boosting productivity.

Winning in the AI era

Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said it was about “helping our 300,000+ customers understand if they’re making the right investments to win in the AI era”.

“By bringing DX into Atlassian’s System of Work, we’re helping engineering teams from some of the biggest enterprise companies move faster, more intentionally and with incredible impact,” Cannon-Brookes said.

Integrating DX’s analytics with Atlassian’s tools will help companies work out where AI should be deployed, and if it is resulting in productivity and efficiency gains.

“DX is a partner to engineering leaders, helping them measure, benchmark and improve developer productivity through data-informed decisions,” Cannon-Brookes said.

“With DX, organisations get the qualitative and quantitative data they need to unlock developer flow.”

DX has more than 350 clients, including the likes of Dropbox and Pinterest, and 90 per cent of these clients already use Atlassian products such as Jira and Confluence.

Making sure AI is working

In a blog post announcing the acquisition, Cannon-Brookes said that engineering leaders are currently asking themselves whether their investment in AI is leading to better software in a shorter timeframe, and that Atlassian buying DX was a “big step forward in answering that question”.

Atlassian said the DX acquisition was all about helping its 300,000+ customers "win in the AI era". Source: Supplied

“Atlassian’s System of Work is about connecting every team, empowering technology-driven organisations and helping our customers turn technology into their greatest competitive advantage,” he said.

DX CEO and founder Abi Noda said that the company was founded based on the “belief that measuring developer productivity and experience was an unsolved problem that requires a research-driven approach”.

“Combining our data intelligence with Atlassian’s AI-powered tools, we can provide customers with unmatched understanding, solutions and feedback to accelerate developer productivity,” Noda said.

Atlassian’s acquisitions

Atlassian has been making big plays of late to dominate the enterprise AI market, particularly when it comes to software development.

Earlier this month it bought The Browser Company of New York for $935 million ($US610 million), which was at the time the largest acquisition in Atlassian’s history.

The Australian tech company has also purchased AI feedback tool Cycle, in a bid to build on Jira Product Discovery.

At the June quarterly financial results briefing, Cannon-Brookes said that AI is “fundamentally changing the way we work”, but that he didn’t think it would lead to mass job cuts.

“Do I think there will be far less developers in the world five years from now? Nope, I don’t think so,” he said.

“I think there’ll be far more people creating software in other functions…whether they’re in finance or HR marketing, there’s going to be a lot more people creating software.

“Do I think developers’ roles will change? Yes. This is a big change. It’s super productive. We see that internally, but there’s still a lot of…work to do.”