Bluesky closes $100M Series B after CEO steps down

Bluesky has announced the closure of a $100 million Series B funding round, which actually closed in April 2025 but was only disclosed recently.

“Bluesky has disclosed a previously closed $100 million Series B, revealing fresh financial firepower just days after a leadership reshuffle that moved founding CEO Jay Graber into a chief innovation officer role”

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The announcement came just days after CEO Jay Graber stepped down from her lead role to become chief innovation officer.

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The round was led by Bain Capital Crypto with participation from Alumni Ventures, True Ventures, Anthos Capital, Bloomberg Beta, and Knight Foundation.

This funding adds to Bluesky's previous $15 million Series A and $8 million seed round.

The company plans to use the capital to scale its protocol and expand its moderation capabilities.

The leadership transition at Bluesky represents a strategic evolution as the company moves toward commercialization while maintaining its technological vision.

Jay Graber's shift into an innovation-focused role underscores a two-track strategy: advancing the protocol while bringing in an operator focused on revenue, partnerships, and enterprise-facing services.

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This organizational change signals that Bluesky is preparing for the more challenging aspects of decentralization—making it an everyday consumer proposition.

The timing of both the funding disclosure and leadership change has raised questions across the tech industry.

For a company built on transparency and open protocols, the delayed announcement adds an intriguing layer to an already turbulent week.

Bluesky has experienced remarkable user growth since its last funding round, with the user base climbing from roughly 13 million to more than 43 million globally.

“Bluesky, the decentralized social network challenging traditional platforms, just announced it closed a $100 million Series B funding round—but here's the twist: the round actually closed last April”

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This surge reflects pent-up demand for a mainstream-ready decentralized social experience.

The underlying network now holds around 20 billion public records including posts, likes, and replies.

The developer ecosystem shows strong engagement with over 400,000 software development kit downloads each month.

More than 1,000 AT Protocol apps are being used weekly, spanning from lightweight experiments to full-fledged products.

Communities like Blacksky showcase how specialized spaces can flourish atop a shared protocol.

The AT Protocol's technical architecture emphasizes portable identity, composable feeds, and interoperable moderation layers.

This positioning sits between ActivityPub ecosystems and crypto-adjacent networks.

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The architecture allows users to move accounts between services and lets developers plug in custom ranking or discovery engines.

Near term, Bluesky plans to invest in reliability and safety features including faster federation and better spam mitigation.

The company is also investing in documentation, tooling, and APIs for developers building on the AT Protocol.

The Series B funding comes from crypto-oriented investors despite Bluesky not being built on blockchain technology.

“Social network Bluesky is gearing up for big changes with today’s news that the company raised $100 million in Series B funding”

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This situation may give some users pause since the company has not integrated cryptocurrencies into its offering.

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However, the company's decentralized design has appealed to investors in the crypto space.

Former CEO Jay Graber's earlier work with the cryptocurrency Zcash helped inspire Bluesky's architecture.

Graber once stated that while the term Web3 got associated with cryptocurrency, the company is focused on evolving social Web 2.0 into an open, distributed model.