Bluesky has entered a new phase with the disclosure of a $100 million Series B round. It was led by Bain Capital Crypto and closed in April 2025, though it was only revealed now. Other backers included Alumni Ventures, True Ventures, Anthos Capital, Bloomberg Beta, and Knight Foundation.
The announcement came just after Jay Graber said she would step aside from the top job and move into the role of chief innovation officer. The shift pointed to a company preparing for its next chapter: one leader returning to product and long-term vision, while the business looks for an executive focused on scale and commercial growth.
This latest raise builds on earlier funding momentum. Bluesky had previously secured an $8 million seed round in 2023 and a $15 million Series A in 2024. What the company did not reveal this time was its updated valuation, leaving open the question of just how richly the market now prices its future.
Growth that is no longer easy to dismiss
What makes the funding more significant is the speed of Bluesky’s expansion. Since its Series A, the platform has grown from 13 million users to more than 43 million worldwide. That is no longer niche growth or curiosity-driven adoption. It suggests Bluesky has moved into a more serious bracket, one where it is beginning to look less like an alternative experiment and more like a durable social platform with global reach.
The story is not only about one app, either. Bluesky’s wider ecosystem, built on the AT Protocol, has expanded alongside the core platform. Smaller services such as video app Skylight and Instagram-style app Flashes have emerged, while companies like Flipboard have been building their own open social experiences, including Surf. Community-led projects have also appeared, including Blacksky, which supports Black social media users.
This broader growth is central to Bluesky’s pitch. The company is not just trying to build a destination app. It is trying to help shape a more open social web where different services can connect and interoperate rather than trap users inside a single platform.
How did the idea begin
Headquartered in Seattle, Bluesky was initially conceived as a Twitter side project in 2019 by Jack Dorsey. It was later incorporated as an independent company, Bluesky Social, in October 2021. The platform launched in an invite-only beta in February 2023 and opened to the public in February 2024.
Building the rails beneath the app
The new funding has gone into growing Bluesky’s team and strengthening both the main app and the AT Protocol beneath it. That foundation is becoming substantial. Bluesky says the wider open social ecosystem, known as the Atmosphere, now contains around 20 billion public records, including posts, likes, comments, and other interactions.
Developer activity is rising, too. The company says its software development tools are downloaded more than 400,000 times each month, and that people use more than 1,000 apps built on AT Protocol every week. Those numbers matter because they show Bluesky’s future may depend as much on what others build around it as on the growth of the flagship app itself.
With fresh funding, a leadership reshuffle, and a fast-growing protocol ecosystem, Bluesky is no longer just selling an alternative to traditional social media. It is trying to prove that open infrastructure can support mainstream scale.
