👉 Background: Atlassian is the Aussie-founded software giant behind Jira, Confluence and Trello, the tech software that developers love to hate. It listed on the Nasdaq in December 2015 and has more than 5x’ed its market value since then. But it's been an up and down rollercoaster with its shares down 29% this year.

‍👉 What happened: The other week, Atlassian acquired The Browser Company for nearly $610 million USD, but now it's gone one bigger because Atlassian is acquiring DX, a five-year-old US startup that helps companies measure developer productivity and satisfaction. And, DX already has Dropbox, Pinterest and Block as customers who are also Atlassian clients.

‍👉 What else: Interestingly, Atlassian’s CTO said that buying DX was a faster way to scale AI capabilities than building in-house. And we know that Atlassian is deadset on building its AI capability… and it wants to do it FAST.

‍What's the key learning?

‍💡When a company needs to level up, there are two main paths: organic growth (building something valuable yourself); or inorganic growth (buying someone else). Atlassian’s $1 billion USD deal for DX is a classic case of choosing the latter.

💡Organic growth can often mean slower progress, but often leads deeper integration into the culture and products. While inorganic growth can accelerate time-to-market and add instant expertise.

💡Atlassian admitted DX’s dashboards were better than what it could have built quickly, so clearly Atlassian is doubling down on inorganic growth to stay competitive in the AI space.