Mike Cannon-Brookes was transformed into one of Australia’s first two tech billionaires when Atlassian, the software company he co-founded, went public on Wall Street in 2015.
Since then the 42-year-old, who is usually seen wearing a T-shirt and baseball cap, has gained wider recognition in Australia for using his fortune to combat global warming.
Until this year, those efforts were confined to philanthropic ventures and a series of conventional green investments. But in February, Cannon-Brookes teamed up with Canadian investment firm Brookfield to bid for AGL, an Australian coal-based utility and the country’s largest carbon emitter.