Leadership Shakeup at Bluesky: CEO Jay Graber Steps Down Amid Record User Growth

Decentralized social network Bluesky is entering a new era of leadership: CEO Jay Graber announced Monday that she will step down from her top executive role to transition into a new position at the company. In a post published directly to Bluesky, Graber confirmed she is moving from CEO to the role of the company’s Chief Innovation Officer, and that venture capitalist Toni Schneider will take over immediately as interim chief executive.

Schneider, a venture partner at True Ventures, shared his own take on the appointment in a public post to the platform, noting he is eager to step into the new role. “I am thrilled to announce that I’ll be joining Bluesky as interim CEO. I deeply believe in what this team has built and the open social web they’re fighting for,” he wrote.

Bluesky first got its start in 2019, when it was founded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey as an internal project inside the company then known as Twitter (now rebranded as X). It spun off from the parent company to become a fully independent business in 2021. The platform has seen explosive user growth over the past several years, a surge that followed Elon Musk’s acquisition and rebranding of Twitter to X. Earlier this week, ahead of the leadership announcement, Bluesky hit a major milestone: its total user count has officially surpassed 43 million.

In a detailed public blog post outlining the transition, Graber explained that the Bluesky board will run a formal search for a permanent full-time CEO to lead the company long-term. She framed the leadership shift as a natural fit for the company as it matures. “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,” Graber wrote. “As part of this transition, Toni Schneider, former CEO of Automattic and partner at True Ventures, will join our team as interim CEO, while our board runs a search for a permanent chief executive.”

For his part, Schneider confirmed he will retain his partner role at True Ventures — a position he has held since 2005 — while serving as interim CEO at Bluesky. He praised the small, talented Bluesky team for how far it has come, noting the platform has already signed up more than 40 million users, built a thriving open developer ecosystem with more than 500 active apps, and scaled all core infrastructure needed to deliver a smooth user experience, from the consumer app and hosting servers to onboarding, content moderation and safety tools. “And they’ve done it while staying true to the open protocol underneath,” he wrote. “Now it’s time to build on that foundation and deliver more open goodness to the world.”

Schneider brings deep executive experience to the interim role. Beyond his 18-year career in venture capital at True Ventures, he served as CEO of Automattic — the parent company of web publishing platform WordPress — between 2006 and 2014.