Jay Graber, the CEO who built Bluesky from a niche X alternative into a platform with 43 million users, is stepping down from the top job.
The company announced yesterday that Graber will move into a newly created role as Chief Innovation Officer, with Toni Schneider, former CEO of Automattic and partner at True Ventures, taking over as interim CEO while the board searches for a permanent replacement.
Graber said the decision was essentially a matter of fit. In a blog post, she described herself as someone energized by exploration and early-stage vision work and said the company now needs a “seasoned operator focused on scaling and execution.”
The pivot makes some sense. Bluesky has reached a stage where the work is less about building something new and more about making it sustainable and commercially viable.
Schneider brings relevant experience, having been at Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, where he managed the commercial side of a business built on open-source technology, which is roughly the same tension Bluesky faces as it tries to build a profitable company on top of the open AT Protocol.
Both Automattic and True Ventures are existing investors in Bluesky.
Graber’s tenure had its highs and lows. The platform saw its biggest growth surges in the wake of Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, now X, as users went looking for alternatives.
However, growth also brought moderation headaches, with some communities feeling the company was too hands-off while Bluesky pushed users toward self-managed tools.
In his own statement, Schneider pointed to Bluesky’s ecosystem of over 500 active apps as a sign of what the platform has achieved and said the focus going forward would be on supporting third-party builders and pushing into the next phase of growth.
