Social network Bluesky is gearing up for big changes with today's news that it has raised $100 million in Series B funding. The round, led by Bain Capital Crypto, was completed in April 2025 and was previously undisclosed.
Other companies participating in this round include Anthos Capital, Bloomberg Beta, and Knight Foundation, in addition to existing investors Alumni Ventures and True Ventures. The round follows Bluesky's $15 million Series A led by Blockchain Capital, which closed in 2024, and an $8 million seed round from Neo and other angel investors the year before. Blue Sky did not disclose its latest valuation.
News of this funding was shared by Strategic the week after Bluesky CEO Jay Graeber announced he was stepping down from his leadership role and transitioning to chief innovation officer. The move demonstrated both Graeber's desire to return to the construction site and the company's need to hire a chief executive officer who could lead Blue Sky to commercial success.
Since Series A, Bluesky has rapidly grown from 13 million users to over 43 million users worldwide. The ecosystem of apps that work with and interoperate with the AT Protocol (also known as ATProto) is also growing, from startups like video app Skylight and Instagram alternative Flashes to larger companies like Flipboard, which is developing open social app Surf. New communities have also sprung up, like Blacksky, which supports Black social media users.
The addition of yet another crypto-oriented VC firm may give some Bluesky users pause, especially since the company has so far not integrated cryptocurrencies into its services. Bluesky is also not built on blockchain technology. Still, former CEO Graeber's previous work with the cryptocurrency Zcash inspired the decentralized design of social networks, making them attractive to investors in the cryptocurrency space.
As Graeber once said in a Wired interview, “The term Web3 has been so tied to cryptocurrencies that it's not a good word to use for what we're doing. But if you think of Web3 as evolving Social Web 2.0, that's what we're doing. We're evolving social media from being based on centralized corporations to being open and decentralized,” she said last spring.
The additional funding will be used to expand Bluesky's team while the company continues to develop the Bluesky app and the underlying ATProto that powers it. The technology is now powering a variety of apps in a larger open social ecosystem known as Atmosphere, the company announced Thursday. Atmosphere contains approximately 20 billion public records, including posts, likes, comments, and other interactions.
Additionally, the number of developers building on ATProto is growing, as evidenced by over 400,000 developer tools (SDK) downloads each month. Additionally, Bluesky says people use more than 1,000 apps built with ATProto every week.