Ten days after founder Jay Graber stepped aside as CEO, Bluesky announced a $100 million Series B funding round led by Bain Capital Crypto, completed last April but only disclosed now. The timing speaks volumes.
There is a quiet irony in the fact that the person who built Bluesky shares her given name with it. Lantian Graber – “blue sky” in Mandarin, spent four years transforming a Twitter research project into a platform with over 43 million users, a functioning decentralized protocol, and a genuine alternative to platforms from which users had fled. On March 9, 2026, she stepped back.
The company revealed raising $100 million in Series B funding from Bain Capital Crypto, joined by Alumni Ventures, True Ventures, Anthos Capital, Bloomberg Beta, and the Knight Foundation. This round closed in April 2025 but is being disclosed now.
The delay in announcing such significant funding is noteworthy. While most startups rush to publicize fresh capital, Bluesky’s decision to withhold this news suggests a focus on substance over showmanship.
The leadership now interimly rests with Toni Schneider, former CEO of Automattic and a partner at True Ventures, who had been advising Graber and the company before the board sought a permanent leader.
Graber transitions into a newly created role as chief innovation officer, focusing on developing the AT Protocol, central to Bluesky’s vision.
Graber’s departure follows an unusually straightforward path. She states: “As Bluesky matures, the company needs a seasoned operator focused on scaling and execution, while I return to building new things.” This indicates a voluntary transition, not a forced exit.
Initially hired by Jack Dorsey in August 2021 for a Twitter-funded research project on decentralized social media, Graber later transformed it into a standalone company. This posed a challenge: how to build a decentralized network without users?
She succeeded. By the $15 million Series A in October 2024, led by Blockchain Capital, the platform had 13 million users. It now boasts 43 million.
The evolution from a $15 million to a $100 million round reflects more than growth; it signals investor confidence in Bluesky’s place in the decentralized social landscape. Earlier investments were bets on potential; the latest is on proven scale and loyalty.
Bain Capital Crypto’s involvement is noteworthy. The firm supports crypto and web infrastructure, and the AT Protocol, allowing user identity, data, and social graph autonomy, aligns with blockchain-era promises of ownership with tangible results.
The Knight Foundation’s participation signals ongoing support from press freedom and open internet communities, viewing Bluesky as critical infrastructure, not just a product.
The funding arrives as Bluesky faces a key challenge: monetizing a platform designed against surveillance advertising and algorithmic manipulation remains unresolved.
The company favors subscription services and domain registration fees—a practical, if modest, model. Proving this can sustain its ambitions at scale is pending.
Schneider’s appointment partly responds to this challenge. Automattic successfully monetized WordPress’s open-source ecosystem with premium services. If Bluesky adopts a similar strategy, success depends on the social networking sector’s acceptance of this model.
The competition has intensified since Bluesky’s inception. Meta’s Threads, utilizing the rival ActivityPub protocol, and X remain strong, with the latter dominating real-time discourse despite forecasts of decline.
Bluesky’s distinction is structural. The AT Protocol’s portable user identity and social graph differ notably from X’s centralized approach and Mastodon’s federated, complex setup.
Graber’s creation has passed its first organizational test: evolving beyond its founder without losing its core value proposition. Schneider’s task is to transform this survival into enduring success. The AT Protocol and its 43 million users will be observing.