Atlassian is making its largest acquisition to date by adding a developer productivity tool to its product suite. The productivity software giant announced it has agreed to acquire the developer productivity insight platform DX for one billion dollars in cash and restricted stock. Enterprises use DX to analyze how productive their engineering teams are and to identify bottlenecks that slow them down.
DX was launched five years ago by Abi Noda and Greyson Junggren. Noda previously explained that he founded the company to find a better way to understand what hampered engineering teams. As a product manager at GitHub, he felt the metrics he was using did not provide a complete picture. He wanted to build something better that did not make developers feel like they were being surveilled.
He stated that the assumptions about what was needed to ship products faster were quite different from what the teams and developers said was getting in their way. He also noted that teams did not always have awareness about their own issues and leadership.
DX came out of stealth mode in 2022 and has since tripled its customer base every year. The company now works with more than 350 enterprise customers, including ADP, Adyen, and GitHub, all while raising less than five million dollars in venture funding.
Atlassian co-founder and CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said that after trying to build an in-house developer productivity insight tool for three years, his company realized it made sense to look for an external, existing option. DX was a natural choice considering ninety percent of its customers were already using Atlassian’s project management and collaboration tools.
Cannon-Brookes said DX has done an amazing job of understanding the qualitative and quantitative aspects of developer productivity and turning that into actionable insights. He added that the timing was right due to the rise of AI tools and companies looking for ways to measure how they are being used. He mentioned it is critical for companies to understand if they are spending their budgets in the right ways.
He also noted there was a great cultural fit between the two companies. Cannon-Brookes said he has always felt an affinity for Utah-based entrepreneurs, as DX is based in Salt Lake City, and he liked that both companies were able to scale without taking on much outside funding.
The feeling was mutual. Noda said he thinks DX and Atlassian are better together than apart. He noted that many of Atlassian’s tools are complementary to the data and information that DX’s platform gathers. He explained that the combination provides customers with a full flywheel to get the data, understand where they are unhealthy, and then use Atlassian’s tools to address those bottlenecks, creating an end-to-end solution that customers want.
DX’s platform will be integrated into the broader Atlassian product suite. This acquisition is Atlassian’s second this month, following the announcement of its agreement to buy AI browser developer The Browser Company in early September.