Bluesky Raises $100M for Open Social Network

Bluesky, the decentralized social networking platform, has successfully closed a substantial $100 million Series B funding round. This significant capital infusion, led by Bain Capital Crypto, aims to accelerate the company's expansion and further develop its open social protocol. The funding round, which concluded in April 2025, also saw participation from a robust group of existing and new investors, including Alumni Ventures, True Ventures, Anthos Capital, Bloomberg Beta, and the Knight Foundation. This latest investment follows Bluesky's prior financing, which included a $15 million Series A led by Blockchain Capital in 2024 and an $8 million seed round from Neo and other angel investors the year before.

The timing of this announcement coincides with a significant leadership transition. Just last week, former CEO Jay Graber announced her move to Chief Innovation Officer, signaling a strategic shift towards bringing in executive leadership focused on commercial expansion while Graber returns to her roots in product development. This move underscores Bluesky's ambition to scale its operations and solidify its market position in the evolving social media arena.

Bluesky has experienced remarkable user growth, expanding its global user base from 13 million to over 43 million since its Series A. This growth is mirrored by the expansion of its ecosystem, which is built upon the AT Protocol (ATProto). This open protocol enables interoperability among a growing number of applications, ranging from emerging startups like video app Skylight and Instagram alternative Flashes, to established players such as Flipboard, which is developing its open social app, Surf. The platform has also fostered vibrant communities, such as Blacksky, dedicated to supporting Black social media users.

While Bluesky is not built on blockchain technology and has not integrated cryptocurrencies, its decentralized architecture, inspired by Graber's earlier work with Zcash, has attracted significant interest from crypto-focused investors. This approach aligns with a broader vision of evolving social media beyond centralized corporate control towards more open and distributed models, a concept often associated with the broader Web3 movement, though Graber has previously noted the term's cryptocurrency connotations.

The newly acquired capital will be instrumental in scaling Bluesky's team and advancing the development of both the Bluesky application and the underlying ATProto infrastructure. This protocol now underpins a diverse range of applications within the Atmosphere, an open social ecosystem comprising approximately 20 billion public records, including posts, likes, and comments. The developer community is also demonstrating strong engagement, with over 400,000 monthly downloads of developer tools (SDKs) and more than a thousand ATProto-based applications being utilized weekly.

This substantial funding round positions Bluesky to further challenge established social media giants by offering a more open, interoperable, and user-centric alternative. The growth in user numbers and developer activity suggests a strong market appetite for decentralized social platforms, indicating a potential significant shift in the social media paradigm.