Background: Atlassian is the Australian-founded software giant that listed on the Nasdaq in 2015. It's the company behind workplace tools like Jira, Trello, and Confluence - aka the apps that help teams assign tasks, leave comments and politely ignore each other in new ways. Over the past few years, Atlassian has also been on an acquisition spree, snapping up companies like Trello, Loom and The Browser company.

What happened: The last couple of years haven't exactly been smooth sprint planning. Atlassian's share price has taken a big hit, co-founder Scott Farquhar stepped down and the company recently paused hiring engineers and other related roles. Now, Atlassian has announced it will cut about 10% of its workforce, which is roughly 1,600 employees.

What else: The company says advances in artificial intelligence mean it needs fewer people in certain roles. And the layoffs are part of Atlassian's effort to steady the ship after its share price slide during the so-called "SaaSpocalypse."

What's the key learning?

💡SaaSpocalypse is the fear that artificial intelligence could wipe out parts of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) industry.

💡For the past 15 years, SaaS companies like Atlassian, Salesforce, Dropbox, and HubSpot built massive subscription businesses selling specialised tools to companies. But AI could replace multiple standalone tools by performing many functions inside one platform.

💡 That possibility has rattled investors. SaaS stocks have dropped sharply, with companies like Atlassian (-66% in market value), Monday.com (-60% in market value) and HubSpot (-55% in market value) losing significant market value as investors question how essential some software tools will be in an AI-first future.