Bluesky raises $100 million in Series B funding

Social network Bluesky has raised $100 million in a Series B funding round—the second stage of venture capital financing—led by Bain Capital Crypto, a venture capital firm. The funding round closed in April 2025 but was only recently disclosed. Other participants in the round included existing investors Alumni Ventures and True Ventures, alongside Anthos Capital, Bloomberg Beta, and the Knight Foundation. This follows a $15 million Series A round closed in 2024, which was led by Blockchain Capital, and an $8 million seed round from Neo and other angel investors.

The funding announcement follows the news that Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is stepping down from the lead role to transition into the position of chief innovation officer. The leadership change signals Graber’s intention to return to building, alongside the company’s need to recruit a chief executive who can drive the platform toward commercial success.

Since its Series A round, the platform has grown. The growth of the platform and its underlying AT Protocol—a decentralized social networking protocol—is reflected in several metrics:

• The user base grew from 13 million to over 43 million global users.
• The Atmosphere network, which is the open social ecosystem powered by the protocol, now contains around 20 billion public records, including posts, likes, and comments.
• Developers are downloading developer tools at a rate of over 400,000 times every month.
• Users interact with over a thousand apps built on the protocol every week.

The ecosystem includes startups like Skylight, larger companies like Flipboard, which is building an open social app, and community-led spaces like Blacksky, which supports Black social media users.

The addition of a crypto-oriented venture capital firm as the lead investor may cause concern for some users, particularly as Bluesky has not integrated cryptocurrencies. The company maintains that Bluesky is not built on blockchain technology. Former CEO Graber explained: “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.”

Why it matters

The funding follows a major leadership transition, signaling a shift toward commercialization while the company attempts to scale its decentralized protocol to a global user base.