Who Is the CEO of Bluesky.

The CEO of Bluesky is Toni Schneider, the founding CEO of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com.

Bluesky named him chief executive on 10 July 2026, making permanent a role he had held on an interim basis since March. He took over from Jay Graber, who led the company through its first years and now works as its chief innovation officer.

People who run brand accounts have a practical reason to care. His stated goal includes many thousands of businesses on the open network Bluesky is part of, which is a clear signal of where he wants to take the company.

Who Toni Schneider is

Schneider was the founding CEO of Automattic, and he is a longtime partner at True Ventures.

He was close to Bluesky before he ran it. Bluesky says he has been an investor in and adviser to the company since 2024, and both Automattic and True Ventures are investors in Bluesky.

That background matters. He is not a stranger brought in from outside, but someone who had backed the company and advised Graber.

How he got the job

The change started in March 2026. On 9 March, Jay Graber wrote on Bluesky’s blog that after several intense years building the company, she had decided to step back as CEO.

She moved into a new role as chief innovation officer. Her reasoning was that Bluesky now needed a seasoned operator focused on scaling and execution, while she went back to building new things.

The same post named Schneider as interim CEO, while Bluesky’s board ran a search for a permanent chief executive. Graber described him as someone who believes deeply in the Bluesky mission and had advised her and the company for over a year.

Four months later, the search ended with him. On 10 July, Bluesky dropped the interim title.

What Jay Graber does now

Graber did not leave. Bluesky’s July announcement describes her as chief innovation officer and chair of the board.

She backed the appointment in plain terms: “Toni has spent the past four months proving he’s the right person to lead this company.”

For anyone watching Bluesky from outside, that continuity is worth noting. Graber still chairs the board, and the new CEO was already inside the circle.

What happened in his first four months

Bluesky pointed to a list of what shipped while Schneider was interim CEO. Over those four months, it says, it launched group chats and a new AI product, among other work.

It also says more than 2 million people joined the network in that time, and nearly 200 new apps launched in what it calls the Atmosphere.

The Atmosphere is Bluesky’s name for the open ecosystem built on the AT Protocol, the technology that lets Bluesky and other apps share one social network.

What he says comes next

Schneider’s own ambition is broad. In Bluesky’s announcement he said: “I believe the Atmosphere will grow to hundreds of millions of users, hundreds of thousands of apps and communities, and many thousands of thriving businesses, and I want to help make that happen.”

That is a goal, not a forecast with a date on it. But it names businesses explicitly, alongside users, apps and communities.

His nearer priority is smaller. TechCrunch reported that in a post on his own blog he named one of his first orders of business as creating “smaller spaces and more private communities”, which he believes will “unlock the next wave of growth and innovation.”

The growth question

Schneider takes over a network with a real audience and a real challenge. TechCrunch reported that Bluesky grew to 43 million users under Graber, and that lately the site has struggled to retain or grow its user base.

Graber’s own March post put the figure at over 40 million users.

Reported user totals and active audiences are different things, and a brand deciding where to spend its time needs the second. We have set out where to find a platform’s real user numbers and how to read them.

Should brands take Bluesky seriously?

Our view: watch it closely, and test it where your audience already is. Do not move your core publishing there yet.

Three things point towards taking it more seriously than before:

• the new CEO was Automattic’s founding CEO, and Graber said Bluesky needed an operator focused on scaling and execution
• his stated goal names businesses, not just users and apps
• a push towards smaller, private communities could suit brands built around a niche

Two things still argue for caution. The user base has struggled to grow, on TechCrunch’s reporting. And the plans for businesses are a stated ambition, with no product or date attached in the announcement.

The right move depends on where your audience actually spends time. If you are not sure, a social audit and strategy review is the place to settle it before you commit a team’s hours.

How NBK thinks about a leadership change like this

A new CEO does not change where your audience is this week. It changes what a platform is likely to build next, and that is worth tracking.

The useful habit is to treat any smaller platform as a test with a clear end date. Decide what you would need to see, post consistently for a fixed period, and judge it on the numbers you set at the start.

That discipline sits behind choosing the right social media platforms for your brand: every channel earns its place by what it returns, not by how much attention it gets in the news.

Next step

If your team is spread across more platforms than it can run well, NBK can help find the constraint in the system and decide where your effort belongs.