Bluesky announces $100M Series B after CEO transition

Social network Bluesky is gearing up for big changes with today’s news that the company raised $100 million in Series B funding. The round, led by Bain Capital Crypto, was closed in April 2025 but had not been disclosed until now. Others that participated in the round include existing investors Alumni Ventures and True Ventures, plus Anthos Capital, Bloomberg Beta, and Knight Foundation. This round follows Bluesky’s $15 million Series A, led by Blockchain Capital, closed in 2024, and its $8 million seed round from Neo and other angel investors the year prior. Bluesky did not disclose its updated valuation. The funding news has been strategically shared the week after Bluesky CEO Jay Graber announced she was stepping down from the lead role and transitioning to become Chief Innovation Officer. The move had signaled both Graber’s desire to return to building as well as the need for the company to hire a chief executive who could drive Bluesky forward to commercial success. Since its Series A, Bluesky has seen rapid growth from 13 million to, now, over 43 million global users. Its ecosystem of apps that work on the AT protocol (also known as atproto) and interoperate with one another has also grown, from startups like the video app Skylight or Instagram alternative Flashes to larger companies like Flipboard, which has been building an open social app, Surf. New communities have also sprung up, like Blacksky, which supports Black social media users. The addition of another crypto-oriented VC firm may give some Bluesky users pause, however, especially since, so far, the company has not integrated cryptocurrencies into its offering. Bluesky isn’t built on blockchain technology, either. Still, former CEO Graber’s earlier work with the cryptocurrency Zcash helped inspire the social network’s decentralized design, which has appealed to investors in the crypto space. As Graber once told Wired in an interview, “the term Web3 got very associated with cryptocurrency, so it’s not a good word to use for what we’re doing. But if you think about Web3 as evolving the social Web 2.0, that kind of is what we’re doing. We’re evolving social media that was based in centralized companies into something that is open and distributed,” she said last spring. The additional funds have been used to scale Bluesky’s team, while the company continues to develop Bluesky’s app and the underlying atproto that powers it. This technology now powers a range of apps in the larger open social ecosystem known as the Atmosphere — a network that now contains around 20 billion public records, including posts, likes, comments, and other interactions, the company said on Thursday. In addition, the number of developers building on atproto is growing, as evidenced by the over 400,000 downloads of developer tools (SDK) seen every month. Plus, Bluesky says that people use over a thousand apps built on atproto every week. Topics Apps, Apps, Bluesky, decentralized, Social, social media, Startups, Venture Sarah Perez Consumer News Editor Sarah has worked as a reporter for TechCrunch since August 2011. She joined the company after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to her work as a reporter, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software. You can contact or verify outreach from Sarah by emailing sarahp@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at sarahperez.01 on Signal.

View Bio June 9 Boston, MA Actively scaling? Fundraising? Planning your next launch?TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 delivers tactical playbooks and direct access to 1,000+ founders and investors who are building, backing, and closing. REGISTER NOW Most Popular Geothermal startup Fervo catapults itself over the ‘valley of death’ Tim De Chant Meta rolls out new AI content enforcement systems while reducing reliance on third-party vendors Aisha Malik Google introduces a new way for users to sideload Android apps that still protects against scams Sarah Perez DoorDash launches a new ‘Tasks’ app that pays couriers to submit videos to train AI Aisha Malik Meta decides not to shut down Horizon Worlds on VR after all Amanda Silberling FBI seizes pro-Iranian hacking group’s websites after destructive Stryker hack Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai CISA urges companies to secure Microsoft Intune systems after hackers mass-wipe Stryker devices Zack Whittaker