Bluesky Secures $100M Series B Funding After CEO Change
▼ Summary
– Bluesky raised $100 million in Series B funding, led by Bain Capital Crypto, which was closed in April 2025 but only recently disclosed.
– The funding announcement follows CEO Jay Graber’s transition to chief innovation officer, signaling a strategic shift to hire a new CEO focused on commercial success.
– The platform has grown rapidly from 13 million to over 43 million users, with an expanding ecosystem of apps built on its open AT Protocol.
– Despite having crypto-oriented investors, Bluesky is not built on blockchain and has not integrated cryptocurrencies, though its decentralized design appeals to that investor space.
– The new funding is being used to scale the team and develop the AT Protocol, which now powers a large open social ecosystem with billions of public records and thousands of apps.
The social media platform Bluesky has successfully secured a significant $100 million in a Series B funding round, a major financial milestone that arrives just after a pivotal leadership transition. This substantial investment, led by Bain Capital Crypto, was finalized in April 2025 but only recently made public. The funding round saw participation from a mix of new and existing backers, including Alumni Ventures, True Ventures, Anthos Capital, Bloomberg Beta, and the Knight Foundation. This latest capital infusion builds upon the company’s previous $15 million Series A round and an $8 million seed round, though the company’s current valuation remains undisclosed.
This announcement follows closely on the heels of a strategic executive shift. Former CEO Jay Graber recently stepped down from the top role, moving into a new position as chief innovation officer. This change reflects her desire to refocus on product development while allowing the company to bring in a new chief executive tasked with steering Bluesky toward commercial viability and broader market success.
Since its last major funding round, Bluesky has experienced explosive user growth, expanding its global user base from 13 million to over 43 million accounts. Its ecosystem, built on the open-source AT Protocol (ATProto), has also flourished. A diverse range of applications now interoperate on this network, from newer startups like the video platform Skylight to established companies like Flipboard, which is developing its own open social app called Surf. New communities, such as Blacksky, have also emerged, catering to specific user groups and demonstrating the platform’s versatility.
The involvement of another cryptocurrency-focused venture firm like Bain Capital Crypto may raise questions among some users, given that Bluesky itself does not utilize blockchain technology or integrate cryptocurrencies into its service. However, the platform’s foundational philosophy of decentralization, partly inspired by Graber’s earlier work in the crypto space, continues to attract investment from this sector. Graber has previously clarified the distinction, noting that while the term “Web3” is often linked to cryptocurrency, Bluesky’s mission is better described as evolving the centralized model of social media into an open and distributed framework.
The newly acquired capital is already being deployed to expand Bluesky’s engineering and operational teams. The company remains focused on enhancing its flagship application and the underlying AT Protocol that powers it. This protocol now supports a vast open social ecosystem called the Atmosphere, which reportedly contains approximately 20 billion public records encompassing posts, likes, and various user interactions.
Developer engagement with the platform is surging, a strong indicator of its growing technical foundation. Bluesky reports that its software development kits (SDKs) are downloaded more than 400,000 times each month, and users actively engage with over a thousand different third-party applications built on ATProto every single week.
(Source: TechCrunch)
