March 19, 2026 — Bluesky, the decentralized social network, has disclosed a $100 million Series B funding round. The investment was led by Bain Capital Crypto and closed in April 2025, but its announcement follows a significant leadership transition at the company.
Funding and Leadership Changes
The Series B round included participation from existing investors Alumni Ventures and True Ventures, alongside new backers Anthos Capital, Bloomberg Beta, and the Knight Foundation. Bluesky did not reveal its updated valuation. This capital infusion follows an earlier $15 million Series A led by Blockchain Capital in 2024 and an $8 million seed round.
The funding disclosure comes one week after Bluesky’s CEO, Jay Graber, announced she was stepping down from the lead role to become Chief Innovation Officer. In a statement, the move was described as allowing Graber to return to product development while the company seeks a new chief executive to drive commercial growth.
Rapid User and Ecosystem Growth
Since its Series A, Bluesky has experienced substantial expansion. The platform’s global user base has grown from 13 million to over 43 million. Its ecosystem of applications built on the AT Protocol, or atproto, has also diversified.
This includes startups like the video app Skylight and Instagram alternative Flashes. Larger companies like Flipboard are also building on the protocol with apps such as Surf. Independent communities like Blacksky, which supports Black social media users, have emerged within the network.
The underlying technology now powers an open social ecosystem called the Atmosphere, which the company says contains approximately 20 billion public records including posts and likes.
Investor Appeal and Decentralized Vision
The participation of another cryptocurrency-focused venture firm, Bain Capital Crypto, highlights investor interest in Bluesky’s decentralized model, even though the platform does not use blockchain or integrate cryptocurrencies. Graber’s prior work with the Zcash cryptocurrency inspired the network’s distributed architecture.
In a past interview with Wired, Graber addressed the Web3 association. “The term Web3 got very associated with cryptocurrency, so it’s not a good word to use for what we’re doing,” she said. “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.”
Developer Adoption and Next Steps
Developer activity on atproto is increasing. Bluesky reports over 400,000 monthly downloads of its software development kit (SDK). People use more than a thousand different apps built on the protocol each week.
The new funds have been allocated to scaling Bluesky’s team and continuing development of its core application and the AT Protocol. The company’s immediate focus is on leveraging its expanded resources to solidify its position in the competitive social media landscape while maintaining its open, decentralized ethos. The search for a new CEO to lead this next phase is ongoing.
For official announcements, refer to the Bluesky official website. Technical documentation for developers is available on the Bluesky GitHub repository.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our editorial team for accuracy and quality.
