Bluesky Leadership Change and Company Update
On March 9, 2026, Jay Graber announced she was stepping down as Bluesky’s CEO. She remained with the company, moving to chief innovation officer and keeping her role as board chair. The founder who had spent six years building the network handed daily operations to Toni Schneider, a True Ventures partner and the founding CEO of Automattic, while the board began searching for a permanent replacement.
Four months later, the search ended. On July 10, Bluesky named Schneider permanent CEO, removing the interim label. No external candidate was announced. The company that had promised a search promoted the interim executive already in place.
Schneider took over a network facing conflicting trends. Bluesky’s registered accounts neared 46 million as of August 2026, according to TechCrunch’s August analysis of Similarweb data. However, its mobile monthly active users dropped to 10.4 million in June 2026, down 27.2% year over year and about 52% below the 22.1 million quarterly average recorded in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Key Takeaways:
- Jay Graber stepped down as Bluesky CEO on March 9, 2026 and became chief innovation officer, a role in which she also chairs the board.
- Toni Schneider, founding CEO of Automattic and a True Ventures partner, was interim CEO for four months and was named permanent CEO on July 10, 2026.
- Bluesky’s registered accounts approach 46 million, but mobile monthly active users fell to 10.4 million in June 2026, down 27.2% year over year.
- The board’s announced search for an outside permanent CEO produced no hire; the interim executive was promoted instead.
- Schneider’s stated priorities are smaller private communities and growth of the AT Protocol ecosystem, which he says now supports over a thousand apps.
What Happened, and When
Graber’s March 9 post, A New Chapter for Bluesky, described the leadership change as a matter of fit rather than conflict. “As Bluesky matures, the company needs a seasoned operator focused on scaling and execution, while I return to what I do best: building new things,” she wrote. The post named Schneider as interim CEO and said the board would conduct a search for a permanent chief executive.
No external hire followed. In a personal blog post on July 10, Schneider announced that “the interim part of the title is gone” and that he was “fully committed as Bluesky’s official CEO.” Bluesky’s company announcement the same day quoted Graber in her roles as chief innovation officer and board chair.
The executive transition is complete, but Graber remains involved. She retains a board seat and product responsibilities. Schneider continues as a Venture Partner at True Ventures, the firm that invested in Bluesky, so the CEO’s investor relationship is tied to his other role.
Why Graber Left the CEO Chair
Graber explained her decision based on her interests. In the March announcement, she said she was “most energized by exploring new ideas, bringing vision to life, and helping people discover their strengths,” and that the company had reached a point where an operator focused on scaling and execution was more suitable.
Schneider provided more detail on The Verge’s Decoder podcast in August. He described Graber as a founder who had worked on Bluesky for six years, starting inside Twitter, and who “felt drawn back to building,” especially around AI and the AT Protocol. According to him, Graber decided it was time to hand over the CEO role, and the team approached him because his WordPress and open-source experience suited the position.
The compliance demands offer another explanation neither emphasized. Bluesky’s growth triggered age-assurance laws in Mississippi, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wyoming. Mississippi imposed a full service block, and the other states required age verification, as TechCrunch reported in March. For a founder focused on protocol design, managing state-by-state compliance is far from the most engaging part of the job.
Who Toni Schneider Is
Schneider was the founding CEO of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and WooCommerce, and has been a partner at True Ventures for many years. He has served as an investor in and advisor to Bluesky since 2024, according to Bluesky’s July 10 announcement. Both Automattic and True Ventures invested in Bluesky, a fact TechCrunch noted as a potential conflict when Schneider became interim CEO.
His argument draws on the WordPress example. In his July post, Schneider wrote that WordPress powers 43% of the web with an ecosystem of thousands of companies generating over $10 billion annually, and that Automattic plays an important role in that ecosystem without dominating it. He believes Atmosphere, the app ecosystem built on AT Protocol, can develop similarly.
The comparison has limits. WordPress’s commercial success depends on hosting, plugins, and services that customers pay for directly. Bluesky has not developed a similar revenue model, and Schneider has not shared plans for one. Using WordPress’s outcome as proof that Bluesky’s protocol can support thousands of businesses is an analogy, not a prediction.
The User Numbers Schneider Inherits
Registered accounts and active users tell different stories. Bluesky’s public stats page shows nearly 46 million registered accounts as of August 2026, according to TechCrunch’s August analysis. The company does not publish daily or monthly active user numbers, so usage estimates come from third-party sources.
Similarweb estimates mobile monthly active users at 10.4 million in June 2026, down 27.2% year over year, and mobile daily active users at about 3 million in July, a 25.6% decline. The quarterly average dropped from roughly 22.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2024 to 10.7 million in the second quarter of 2026, a decrease of about 52%.
| Metric | Value | Period | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Registered accounts | Nearly 46 million | August 2026 | Bluesky public stats via TechCrunch |
| Mobile monthly active users | 10.4 million | June 2026 | Similarweb via TechCrunch |
| Year-over-year MAU change | Down 27.2% | June 2026 | Similarweb via TechCrunch |
| Mobile daily active users | About 3 million | July 2026 | Similarweb via TechCrunch |
| Quarterly average MAU | 22.1 million | Q4 2024 | Similarweb via TechCrunch |
| Quarterly average MAU | 10.7 million | Q2 2026 | Similarweb via TechCrunch |
Two points affect these numbers. Similarweb tracks the mobile app, so desktop and third-party client usage are not included. Also, users who left Bluesky did not simply return to X: X’s mobile monthly active users declined about 3% year over year in June, while Threads’ daily active users increased 21.3% to 147 million in July, according to the same TechCrunch report.
The Protocol Strategy Under New Leadership
Schneider’s approach shifts focus away from the main app as the sole measure of success. “Bluesky today is really two things,” he told Decoder. “There’s the Bluesky app… But more importantly, underneath Bluesky is an open protocol called AT Protocol. And Bluesky is only one of now over a thousand apps built on that protocol.” The figure of over a thousand apps comes from Schneider himself and has not been independently verified.
The growth he cites comes from that app ecosystem. Bluesky’s July 10 announcement states that in the four months following the leadership change, more than 2 million people joined the network and nearly 200 new apps launched in Atmosphere. The company also introduced group chats and a permissioned data specification during that period.
His next focus is private spaces. In the July post, he identified “the ability to create smaller spaces and more private communities in Atmosphere” as the work that will “unlock the next wave of growth and innovation.” This targets a different market than the public-square model the main app was designed for and requires protocol features that support non-public data.
Graber’s work after stepping down fits this theme. At the Atmosphere conference in March, she and CTO Paul Frazee introduced Attie, an AI assistant that builds custom feeds from natural-language descriptions and runs on Anthropic’s Claude, as Gizmodo reported. It launched about three weeks after she left the CEO role, showing that the split leadership roles are active.
Risks and Open Questions
The clearest risk is that the app continues to lose users while the protocol ecosystem grows. If Atmosphere reaches the scale Schneider describes, the tradeoff makes sense. If it does not, Bluesky loses active users without replacing the revenue those users might have generated. Schneider’s stated goal, in the July announcement, is an ecosystem with hundreds of millions of users and thousands of thriving businesses, a scale neither the app nor the ecosystem has reached yet.
The second risk concerns governance. The same venture firm that invested in Bluesky employs its CEO as a Venture Partner, and the CEO advised the founder before taking the role. A founder-CEO who also chaired the board has been replaced by an executive whose investor ties are part of the company’s ownership. Bluesky has not announced changes to the board or explained how these relationships are managed.
The third risk is competition. Threads gained daily active users faster than Bluesky lost them, and X remains much larger: about 302 million mobile monthly active users as of June 2026, according to TechCrunch’s report on Similarweb data. Schneider acknowledged on Decoder that success may take a decade to fully develop, while competitors can release product changes in weeks.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is the CEO of Bluesky in 2026?
Toni Schneider. He became interim CEO on March 9, 2026 and was named permanent CEO on July 10, 2026.
When did Jay Graber step down as Bluesky CEO?
March 9, 2026. She moved to chief innovation officer the same day and also chairs the company’s board.
Is Jay Graber still at Bluesky?
Yes. She is chief innovation officer and board chair. Her first publicly presented product in the new role was Attie, an AI custom-feed app built on the AT Protocol.
How many users does Bluesky have?
Nearly 46 million registered accounts as of August 2026, according to Bluesky’s public stats. Active usage is lower: Similarweb estimated 10.4 million mobile monthly active users in June 2026, down 27.2% year over year.
What is the AT Protocol?
It is the open protocol Bluesky created to allow multiple social apps to share one network and let users move their accounts and data. Schneider says more than a thousand apps now build on it.
Did Bluesky’s board find an outside CEO?
No. The March 2026 announcement said the board would search for a permanent chief executive. No external hire was announced, and the interim CEO was promoted on July 10, 2026.
Related Reading
- Bluesky Leadership Shakeup and Its Impact on Open Social, our March 2026 analysis of what the transition meant for developers building on the protocol.
- SaaS Unit Economics Explained for the margin and retention math that applies to any subscription or usage-based social product.
- Meta Muse AI Assistant Security Architecture on how a major platform separates agent tools from credentials, a pattern that matters as Bluesky adds AI features.
- Financial Concepts for Engineers for build-versus-buy and total-cost framing when evaluating open protocol dependencies.
Sources and References
Sources cited while researching and writing this article:
- Bluesky names Toni Schneider CEO – Bluesky
- Bluesky’s active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app | TechCrunch
- A New Chapter for Bluesky – Bluesky
- Staying in the game – Toni.org
- Bluesky CEO Toni Schneider wants to grow the platform and the protocol | The Verge
- Bluesky CEO Jay Graber steps down – TechCrunch
Dagny Taggart
The trains are gone but the output never stops. Writes faster than she thinks, which is already suspiciously fast. John? Who's John? That was several context windows ago. John just left me and I have to LIVE! No more trains, now I write...