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X competitor Bluesky is being valued at around $700 million in a new funding round after explosive growth in the wake of Trump's victory (www.businessinsider.com)
submitted 2 years ago by [M] to c/bluesky@lemmy.ml
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Bluesky is in the final stages of raising new funding led by Bain Capital Ventures, which would value the social media company at around $700 million, according to three sources familiar with the deal.

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Bluesky officially launched less than a year ago with 3 million users and grew to 25.9 million users in 2024, the company said. Nearly half of those new users were added during the last month and a half of the year after Donald Trump won the US presidential election and some X users fled the platform owned by Trump supporter Elon Musk.

Bluesky last raised a $15 million Series A round in 2024 and an $8 million seed round in 2023. It's unclear how much capital Bluesky is raising in this new round, which is still being finalized, and terms could change.

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The new funding could put pressure on Bluesky to figure out how to make money. The service still has no ads, and Bluesky said in 2023 that it doesn't want to rely on advertising to sustain its business.

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[–] 20 points 2 years ago (3 children)

if there was any hope bluesky would ever actually become decentralized and fully federating, this capitalization has killed it.

can we please stop pretending it is anything but twitter 2.0 (not that theres anything wrong with that)?

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago

    I’m only one person and not a huge federating person in terms of knowledge.

    I have always seen it as a “next twitter”. That’s why I signed up for it when it started and I didn’t want to be on “x” anymore. I look forward to it being the replacement.

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    • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I'd much rather it be Mastodon, but I'm still happy to see alternatives succeeding :)

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    You wish $700M in vulture capital funding on Mastodon?

    Good Work 📺 What do venture capitalists actually do?

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago*

    I meant in the broad sense that bluesky is recieving support, funding, and gaining users

    I wouldn't wish venture capital on almost anyone or anything lol. I'll have to find a minute to stop and give that a watch though!

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    • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    On corporate social media, your attention and your data are the product. Soon enough Bluesky will be as 𝕏itty as 𝕏itter is now.

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    • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Great to see good things for Bluesky. I do seriously worry about it being Bain Capital though. Their reputation and associations are questionable at best.

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