Latest news with #ScottFarquhar
AU Financial Review
2 days ago
- Business
- AU Financial Review
Tech Council warns against new AI laws, seeks plan for energy demands
The Australian Tech Council has urged against developing new AI laws, saying they would risk curbing innovation and that the government should instead work within current frameworks and establish a national digital advisory board to prepare the country for AI's energy demands. The council's submission to this week's Economic Reform Roundtable follows its president and Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar's recent appearance at the National Press Club. He urged the government to consider relaxing iron-clad copyright legislation that prohibits the scrapping of existing intellectual property – such as film, television, newspaper articles and books – to train large language models.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
1 Volatile Stock Worth Investigating and 2 We Find Risky
A highly volatile stock can deliver big gains - or just as easily wipe out a portfolio if things go south. While some investors embrace risk, mistakes can be costly for those who aren't prepared. At StockStory, our job is to help you avoid costly mistakes and stay on the right side of the trade. That said, here is one volatile stock that could deliver huge gains and two best left to the gamblers. Two Stocks to Sell: Brunswick (BC) Rolling One-Year Beta: 1.25 Formerly known as Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company, Brunswick (NYSE: BC) is a designer and manufacturer of recreational marine products, including boats, engines, and marine parts. Why Do We Pass on BC? Annual revenue declines of 13% over the last two years indicate problems with its market positioning Incremental sales over the last five years were much less profitable as its earnings per share fell by 4.2% annually while its revenue grew Diminishing returns on capital suggest its earlier profit pools are drying up Brunswick's stock price of $64.65 implies a valuation ratio of 16.2x forward P/E. If you're considering BC for your portfolio, see our FREE research report to learn more. Columbus McKinnon (CMCO) Rolling One-Year Beta: 1.26 With 19 different brands across the globe, Columbus McKinnon (NASDAQ:CMCO) offers material handling equipment for the construction, manufacturing, and transportation industries. Why Do We Think CMCO Will Underperform? Sales were flat over the last two years, indicating it's failed to expand this cycle Performance over the past two years shows each sale was less profitable, as its earnings per share fell by 9.3% annually Capital intensity has ramped up over the last five years as its free cash flow margin decreased by 7.4 percentage points Columbus McKinnon is trading at $14.78 per share, or 5.6x forward P/E. Check out our free in-depth research report to learn more about why CMCO doesn't pass our bar. One Stock to Watch: Atlassian (TEAM) Rolling One-Year Beta: 1.52 Founded by Australian co-CEOs Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar in 2002, Atlassian (NASDAQ:TEAM) provides software as a service that makes it easier for large teams of software developers to manage projects, especially in software development. Why Are We Positive On TEAM? Winning new contracts that can potentially increase in value as its billings growth has averaged 14% over the last year Well-designed software integrates seamlessly with other workflows, enabling swift payback periods on marketing expenses and customer growth at scale Robust free cash flow margin of 27.1% gives it many options for capital deployment At $164.02 per share, Atlassian trades at 7x forward price-to-sales. Is now the time to initiate a position? See for yourself in our in-depth research report, it's free. High-Quality Stocks for All Market Conditions When Trump unveiled his aggressive tariff plan in April 2025, markets tanked as investors feared a full-blown trade war. But those who panicked and sold missed the subsequent rebound that's already erased most losses. Don't let fear keep you from great opportunities and take a look at Top 5 Growth Stocks for this month. This is a curated list of our High Quality stocks that have generated a market-beating return of 183% over the last five years (as of March 31st 2025). Stocks that made our list in 2020 include now familiar names such as Nvidia (+1,545% between March 2020 and March 2025) as well as under-the-radar businesses like the once-micro-cap company Tecnoglass (+1,754% five-year return). Find your next big winner with StockStory today for free. Find your next big winner with StockStory today. Find your next big winner with StockStory today StockStory is growing and hiring equity analyst and marketing roles. Are you a 0 to 1 builder passionate about the markets and AI? See the open roles here. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
The Australian
5 days ago
- Business
- The Australian
Atlassian's Mike Cannon-Brookes says news of Scott Farquhar fight ‘bullshit'
The Australian Business Network It's rare to hear Mike Cannon-Brookes unbutton himself and speak in public. And right now he's pissed, especially with us, with this newspaper, with our inquiries into the cultural health of Atlassian, with our write-ups of his staff lay-offs, with our nosing into his relationship with Scott Farquhar and, of course, his soaring private jet usage. 'Trust me, if you're in my world for the past month, ooft, it's been fun,' he told staff on Thursday. Cannon-Brookes isn't one to bare his soul so easily, so 'ooft' was a glimpse into the Real Mike, the man beneath the bun. And he's quietly seething. Cannon-Brookes was speaking to about 3000 Atlassian employees during a virtual Town Hall. They'd dialled in, these workers, around 8am for an hour-long free-for-all of questions, curated by Amy Glancey, his chief of staff. On the recent sacking of 150 employees, their jobs lost to AI, Cannon-Brookes did break with form, owned the hard call: 'These are tough decisions. 'There is a large team that worked on all of these things, but all these types of decisions come to me, to make, approve, whatever, so accountability rests on my shoulders.' From there, accountability flew at high speed in a westerly direction. A brave employee named 'Michael' wanted to know what the executive team was doing to mend the 'public perception issues' at Atlassian. People have been talking, Michael said. 'My professional network is asking me how bad it is to work here.' A terrified Glancey turned to her boss. 'Mike, do you wanna take this on?' 'Not particularly, but I will,' he sulked, giving the necessary background. 'For anyone outside of Australia, (long sigh) context is the past few weeks there have been a bunch of stories, from one particular Australian newspaper called The Australian.' That's us. Mike's displeasure appears to centre on reports that he and his co-founder, Farquhar, have suffered a cooling in their very long friendship. It was Farquhar who resigned as co-CEO of Atlassian in August last year, but without any bad blood, apparently. Even though everyone says as much. Even though Cannon-Brookes didn't attend the farewell party. '(The) stuff about Scott and his departure made us both laugh, to be honest,' said Cannon-Brookes. 'Not that we were making fun of it, just the ridiculousness of what's there. (I've) seen Scott a whole bunch of times since, spoke to him only a couple of days ago, pretty much almost weekly. Lots of things are pretty much bullshit, but people are going to write what they're going to write.' Farquhar is on the board of Atlassian and he owns a big chunk of the company. Of course they talk; he's a massive stakeholder. Lots of people suffer through working relationships with colleagues they hardly adore. Jim Chalmers and Andrew Charlton do it all the time. Jim's probably doing it with Albo right now. On he went, Cannon-Brookes, slightly amused by it all: 'It's very strange to be a character in a story that's being written about and being like, 'Wait, this is not the story' ', which is what every billionaire says when they lose control of the narrative. It's why PR was invented, Mike; it's why you pay Kate Lord. But, fine, blame us; how dare we inquire into the affairs of Atlassian, a listed multinational corporation. How dare we contrast the blather about saving the planet with those wasteful jet flights to Bora Bora or wherever. 'We don't comment on – I'm gonna get myself in a lot of trouble here – gossipy, trash-media,' he continued. But, wait, wasn't that him stepping off a commercial flight at Sydney Airport earlier this week? Wasn't that him, without an ExecuJet contingent, lumping through the terminal like everyone else and carrying his own luggage? We'd wager that was a result of someone reading our trash, someone important with Cannon-Brookes's ear, for a man of such hubris wouldn't have parked his Bombardier so lightly. 'We have a good reason to believe,' he said, pausing, 'let me stay within the legal boundaries here – we have good reasons to believe it's a targeted and very personal campaign. People outside the company, fine, you know, I understand, that's part of my world.' Presumably that's a reference to his wife, Annie, from whom he's been separated the past two years. She and Cannon-Brookes are in a proxy battle over Kevin Chiu, a former employee who was fired for allegedly downloading files and transferring money out of the family office venture. Chiu did this, allegedly, at the behest of Annie's close pal, Catherine Manuel. 'We do know that some of these stories are being fed by current employees – that's people within our walls leaking information. That creates a huge risk for any words I put here, right? 'Because are we gonna get leaked? It shouldn't be leaked, but then you're like, 'Ah, but should we not address it?'. Nah, nah, nah, nah, there'll be, cue some BS story about Angry Mike, which isn't fair, but that's the way it goes.' Well, he is angry, there's no denying it. And he's prescient, if nothing else.
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Scott Farquhar thinks Australia should let AI train for free on creative content. He overlooks one key point
Australia should adopt US-style copyright law to allow artificial intelligence to suck up all creative content or risk harming investment in the industry in Australia, according to Atlassian founder, Scott Farquhar. Farquhar, the Tech Council of Australia CEO, told ABC's 7.30 program on Tuesday: 'all AI usage of mining or searching or going across data is probably illegal under Australian law and I think that hurts a lot of investment of these companies in Australia'. This is because, he said, Australia doesn't have fair use exemptions coded into copyright law like the US does. Farquhar's claim overlooks that this is not a settled issue in the US, and could have devastating effects on creative industries. Companies developing AI such as Atlassian, Google and Meta, want a text and data mining exemption put into copyright law to make AI able to train on all human works in perpetuity without paying for it. Sign up: AU Breaking News email Farquhar's argument is that it is not theft of people's work unless the AI is used to 'copy an artist directly' such as creating a song in their style. 'I do think people would say that, hey, if people are going to sit down with a digital companion, an AI song creator and they collaboratively work with an AI to create something new to the world, that's probably fair use.' Farquhar said the benefits of large language models outweigh the issues raised by AI training its data on other people's work for free. His argument hinges on whether that AI then goes on to create something 'new and novel' which is referred to in copyright as being transformative – creating something new. He said he would have no issue with someone taking what he had created and using it as long as it was 'transformative'. 'If someone had used my intellectual property to compete with me, then I think that is an issue, directly with me. If they'd used all the intellectual property of all the software on the world to help people write software better in the future, I think that is a fair use.' US law is not settled on AI training being fair use. The US Copyright Office noted in its May pre-print report on generative AI training that there are dozens of lawsuits challenging AI companies using fair use as an excuse for training large-language models on copyrighted works without paying. In the US, there are also factors to consider whether something is fair use include: Whether the use is commercial or not The nature of the copyrighted work The amount used of the copyrighted work The effect of the use on the market for or value of the copyrighted work. In US case law, the transformative nature of what is made of what was taken is the first important factor in fair use, Australian law firm Gilbert + Tobin noted in a May publication but it is not the only factor to consider, with the impact on the market of the copyrighted work being key. The US supreme court has twice described this as 'undoubtedly the single most important element of fair use', according to the US Copyright Office report. 'The copying involved in AI training threatens significant potential harm to the market for or value of copyrighted works,' the report stated. 'Where a model can produce substantially similar outputs that directly substitute for works in the training data, it can lead to lost sales. Even where a model's outputs are not substantially similar to any specific copyrighted work, they can dilute the market for works similar to those found in its training data, including by generating material stylistically similar to those works.' The Copyright Office stopped short of recommending legislative intervention in the US, noting that voluntary licensing were already under way with some AI companies, and allowing licensing would allow AI innovation to continue to 'advance without undermining intellectual property rights.' Farquhar's argument that how generative AI uses copyrighted works would stack up if there were proper guarantees that all usage would be transformative and would not affect the markets from which they're drawing from. In many of the industries, AI could have devastating effects. In news, for example, AI summaries in Google search already mean people click through to stories less frequently for information, and referrals from AI chatbots compared to the amount of times that AI crawls a page are even worse. To argue that fair use for AI based on the US law is something Australia should aspire to overlooks that it's hardly settled law, and is being hard fought in the courts. Rushing to give the tech companies what they want in the name of innovation for one new industry could come at the expense of many other industries.
Sky News AU
6 days ago
- Business
- Sky News AU
Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar defends AI companies stealing intellectual property in trainwreck ABC interview
Co-founder of Atlassian Scott Farquhar has come under fire in a tense interview on the ABC's 7.30 program, where he was repeatedly pressed on whether AI companies should be allowed to use copyrighted material without compensating creators. Farquhar appeared on the programme to promote the economic potential of artificial intelligence ahead of next week's productivity roundtable. But the conversation with presenter Sarah Ferguson quickly turned to the growing anger among Australian artists, who argue their work is being exploited by tech giants. ABC 730 presenter Sarah Ferguson. Picture: ABC Former CEO of Atlassian Scott Farquhar. Picture: ABC Defending calls for AI companies to receive exemptions under Australia's copyright laws, Farquhar tried to argue there was a reasonable fair use exemption. 'Copyright exists to basically give artists who create something a right to almost all the uses of it, and we have a thing called fair use. AI is a broad and transformative technology,' he told the ABC. Currently, Australia lacks explicit provisions for 'fair use' in the context of AI, making the practice of scraping content for training language models legally murky. Farquhar argued this uncertainty is harming investment. 'All AI usage of mining or searching or going across data is probably illegal under Australian law. And I think that hurts a lot of investment.' Farquhar was then confronted with a hypothetical scenario involving his own intellectual property - with Ms Ferguson asking how we would feel if someone had copied the core of Atlassian to build a rival product without paying him. 'If it had been transformative, yes,' Farquhar said. 'If someone had used my intellectual property to compete with me, then I think that is an issue. If they'd used all the intellectual property of all the software on the world to help people write software better in the future, that is a fair use.' The exchange raised eyebrows, particularly given his admission that artists like Midnight Oil should not necessarily be able to block the use of their work by AI companies. When challenged that creators were not being paid, Farquhar replied that the "ABC doesn't pay people when they quote an article.' When pressed further on whether the benefits of AI outweigh the rights of individual Australian creators, Farquhar pointed back to the idea of 'fair use'. 'Like, I think there are benefits to that. We have to work out what is fair use for these AI models,' he said.
